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THE 



SCIENTIFIC BA.SIS 



OF 



SPIRITUALISM. 



By EPES SARGENT, 

AUTHOR OF "PLANCHETTE, OR THE DESPAIR OF SCIENCE," "THE PROOF 
PALPABLE OF IMMORTALITY," ETC. 






Un scepticisme presomptueux qui rejette les faits sans examen 
est plus funeste que la credulity qui les accepte. 

Alexander Von Humboldt. 




BOSTON: ^ 
COLBY AND RICH, PUBLISHERS, 
No. 9 Montgomery Place. 

1881. 

iroj 



4%- 



COPYRIGHT, 

isso,^ 
By Epes Sargent. 



Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
No. 4 Pearl Street. 



/ 



*/?/ 



■ • 
PREFACE. 



The claim that there is a scientific basis for Spirit- 
ualism will be an offence to many. Indeed, the mere 
announcement of this work has called forth adverse 
pre-judgments because of its title. But constantly 
recurring facts, which have stood the test of more 
than thirty-three years of ridicule, denunciation, and 
antagonism, must be admitted as having within them 
some stubborn elements of vitality, if not of scientific 
verification. 

What is science but a collection of truths, suggest- 
ive of an inference ? According to John Stuart Mill, 
the language of science is, " This is, or This is not; 
This does, or does not happen. Science takes cogni- 
zance of a phenomenon, and endeavors to discover its 
law." Surely, under this ruling Spiritualism has a 
scientific basis in its proven facts. 

The man claiming to be scientific, who imagines that 
he knows all the laws of nature so thoroughly that 
occurrences like clairvoyance and direct writing can- 
not take place without transcending the boundaries of 
scientific recognition, is himself under a hallucination 
more serious than any which he affects to deplore. 

The neglect in all ages of the world to treat these 
and cognate facts with fearless, scientific scrutiny, has 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

been productive of incalculable mischief. In ancient 
times, the assumption that all that comes from the 
unseen world, certified by seeming miracle or preter- 
human power, must be from God or from gods, led to 
all sorts of theosophic impositions, superstitions, spu- 
rious revelations, and wild delusions. 

In mediseval times, and during the witchcraft ex- 
citement, monstrous cruelties were practised under 
the sanction of law through the failure to recognize 
that nothing occurring in the realm of nature can be 
supernatural, and that all phenomena whatever are 
subjects for cool scientific investigation and analysis. 
Certain remarkable psychic phenomena were con- 
strued as Satanic and unnatural, and an ancient He- 
brew prohibition, founded in ignorance, was made the 
excuse for punishing with death innocent persons, sus- 
pected of producing in others-, medially affected, any 
inexplicable manifestation of abnormal power. 

In our own day, though belief in spirits has been 
repudiated extensively, the credulity of unbelief 
threatens new dangers. By dismissing the phenom- 
ena as impossible, unnatural, or supernatural, special- 
ists in science, — who, however eminent in their own 
departments, are ignorant of the first rudiments of the 
psycho-physical science, now inchoate, — instead of 
checking superstition by their scornful attitude, are 
really giving it its excuse for being. Persons experi- 
mentally sure of the phenomena, finding that they can 
get no guidance or light from men of science, qualified 
by laborious study and experiment to explain the oc- 
currences, either put premature constructions on what 
they witness, or yield a too hasty credence to the 
assurances of some medium or medial pretender 



PREFACE. 5 

claiming a divine or high spiritual inspiration. Even 
so it was in the old days of oracles, seers, and myths, 
and so it umy be again, with variations, unless a sci- 
ence, at once searching and liberal, reverent and in- 
trepid, shall interpose to prevent such a revival, and 
protect the unwary from the frauds and delusions to 
which a little display of medial power may lead. 

The attempt made in 1876, in London, by Professor 
Lankester, a specialist in physical science, wedded to 
the materialistic monism of Haeckel, to put a stop to 
the phenomena through Henry Slade, the medium, and 
to do thi\ by the strong arm of the law, was simply an 
act of supjerstition, prompted by the same fanaticism 
(taking the form of unbelief instead of belief) which 
actuated the proceedings of " Matthew Hopkins, of 
Manningtree, Gent.," the famous English " witch- 
finder " of the year 1645. The first scientists of Ger- 
many at once exempted Slade from Lankester's suspi- 
cions ; and Zollner says, in reference to Slade : " The 
physical facts observed by us in his presence neg- 
atived on every reasonable ground the supposition 
that he, in one solitary case, had taken refuge in im- 
posture. In our eyes, therefore, he was innocently 
condemned, — a victim of his accuser's and judge's 
limited knowledge." The recent remarkable occur- 
rences in open church at Knockmore, in Ireland, 
where hands and living figures have mysteriously 
appeared, show how important it is that these phe- 
nomena should no longer be evaded. 

Rationally studied and interpreted, unmixed with 
delusions self-generated or imposed by others, Spirit- 
ualism is the one safeguard against all superstitions. 
It shows that the unseen world is as much within the 



6 PREFACE. 

sphere of universal nature as our own ; it is the sol- 
vent of many mysteries that have perplexed philos- 
ophers and stultified historians ; it shows that not 
spirits, but our own misconstructions and unchecked 
passions, are what we have most to feaj} vjliat bad 
persons have entered its ranks, and that flighty per- 
sons have brought it into ill-repute, — that it has been 
used to deceive or mislead, — should make the obliga- 
tion all the more obvious to the generous mind to help 
to sift and co-ordinate its facts and arrest its abuses. 

It is therefore with regret that I find so liberal a 
champion of truth as R. W. Emerson recommending 
ignorance as the best policy in regard to a subject 
which, in the hands of fanaticism or imposture, has 
been the cause of such great disasters and mistakes, 
public and private, as far back as history goes. In a 
recent article on u Demonology," this distinguished 
writer remarks : "There are many things of which a 
wise man might wish to be ignorant, and these spiritual 
phenomena are such. Shun them as you would the 
secrets of the undertaker and the butcher." Et tu 7 
Brute? 

This is all wrong, ideally, really, and morally. Even 
the comparisons by which the sentiment is illustrated 
are vitiated by unsoundness ; for however our esthetic 
sensibilities may recoil, what is it but pusillanimity 
to ignore " the secrets of the undertaker and the 
butcher " ? Have we no care as to how the cast-off 
body of the beloved one may be disposed of? Are 
we indifferent as to what sufferings may be inflicted 
on the poor brute whose life is to minister to our 
carnivorous appetite? The sentiment has no saving 
grace ; it is hollow and spurious. Not by trying to 



PREFACE. 7 

make us shun the truth as something disagreeable will 
the philosopher deter any but the timid or weak from 
finding out all that is genuine and demonstrable in 
phenomena foreshadowing a continuous life for man. 

Contrast the advice with that of Dr. John W. Dra- 
per, the well-known professor of chemistry and physi- 
ology in the University of New York. Referring to 
the mysteries of life, he says : " God has formed our 
understandings to grasp all these things. I have no 
sympathy with those who say of this or that physio- 
logical problem, l It is above our reason.' " And, as if 
anticipating these supersensual phenomena, which our 
Concord sage would have us shun, the eminent physi- 
ologist tells us, that the application of exact science 
to physiology is " bringing into the region of physical 
demonstration the existence and immortality of the 
soul of man, and furnishing conspicuous illustrations 
of the attributes of God." 

Mark too the language of the venerable German 
philosopher, I. H. Fichte, uttered a few weeks before 
his death in 1879 : " Notwithstanding my age and my 
exemption from the controversies of the day, I feel it 
my duty to bear testimony to the great fact of Spirit- 
ualism. No one should keep silent.' 7 A worthy ut- 
terance from the son of the illustrious contemporary 
of Kant, and the inheritor of his sire's splendid en- 
dowments ! 

The progress of modern Spiritualism has been some- 
thing marvellous. In less than forty years it has 
gained at least twenty millions of adherents in all parts 
of the world. Adapting itself, through its eclectic 
affinity with all forms of truth, to al nationalities and 
classes, and repeating its peculiar manifestations every- 



8 PREFACE. 

where among persons ignorant of its forms and its 
antecedents, it presents the features of a universal 
truth, the developments of a grand, transcendent sci- 
ence, confirming all the traditions and intuitions of the 
soul's immortality, and heralding a dawn before whose 
light every other science, relating to the nature and 
destiny of man, must seek to orient itself hereafter. 

Of the present volume more than four-fifths is now 
for the first time published. Passages here and there, 
often much altered, have been adopted, from contribu- 
tions made by me during the last thirty years to nearly 
all the periodical publications devoted to the subject, 
in England and the United States. As parts of the 
work were written at long intervals, repetitions of the 
same line of thought may be found ; but these, though 
critically regarded a blemish, may have their uses for 
the reader in emphasizing the more essential consid- 
erations. Objections to the existence of a fact of 
nature must needs be unscientific; but as they con- 
tinue to be brought up against Spiritualism by persons 
otherwise well informed, I have devoted some space 
to their refutation. 

But the time has gone by when the facts of this 
volume could be dismissed as coincidences, delusions, 
or frauds. The hour is coming, and now is, when the 
man claiming to be a philosopher, physical or meta- 
physical, who shall overlook the constantly recurring 
phenomena here recorded, will be set down as behind 
the age, or as evading its most important question. 
Spiritualism is not now " the despair of science," as I 
called it on the title-page of my first book on the sub- 
ject. Among intelligent observers its claims to scien- 
tific recognition are no longer a matter of doubt. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Basis : — Clairvoyance ; Direct Writing. 

page 
Typical Facts — Meaning of Spirit — Theory of Leibnitz — 
Proved Phenomena — Medial Frauds — Transfiguration — 
So-called Exposures — Testimony of a Jurist — Fairbairn 

— Hopps — Herbert Spencer — Form-Manifestations among 
Indians — Personal Experience in Pneumatography — Joseph 
Cook's Statement — Watkins, the Medium — Hiram Sibley's 
Testimony — J. Edwin Hunt's — Phillips, the Medium — A. 
E. Wallace's Testimony — Zollner, Ulrici, Fichte, and Wundt 

— Experiences of Baron Guldenstubbe — Demonphobia — 
Testimony of Storer, Hayward, Beals, Wetherbee, Timayenis, 
Stebbins — Platform Proofs — Mrs. Simpson — Bellachini, 
the Conjurer — Stainton-Moses — Dr. Wyld — Slade . 13-66 



CHAPTER II. 

Facts against Theories. 

The Materialistic Theory insufficient — Prof. Denslow's State- 
ment — His Experiences with Slade and Mrs. Simpson — Sam- 
uel Watson, Wesley, Priestley, Oberlin — List of Phenomena 
— Theory of Mundane Agency — Significance of the Phenom- 
ena — Zbllner's Experiments — Knots in an Endless Cord — 
Testimony of T. L. Nichols — Opinions of Plutarch, Cicero, 
St. Augustine — The " Scientific American " — Clairvoyance 
and Direct Writing as a Scientific Basis — Cognate Phenom- 
ena analogically proved 67- 

CHAPTER III. 

Eeplt to Objections oe Wundt. 

Open Letter to Ulrici — Slade in Leipsic — Wundt contradicts 
Himself — Objections to a Scientific Recognition — No Viola- 
tion of Nature's Laws — Objections answered — Youmans — 

9 



10 CONTENTS. 



A Common Fallacy — Universal Causality — Frivolous Charges 
against Slade — Wundt's Ignorance of the Subject — Ulrici and 
Fichte on the Phenomena — Prayer of the Prince Imperial — 
Witchcraft explained by Spiritualism — Quotation from "Plan- 
chette " — Blackstone — Lecky — The Phelps Phenomena — 
Cook on the Spiritual Body — Materialization — Baden Powell 

— Animism — Leibnitz and Kant — Notions of the Uncivilized 

— Jugglery refuted by the Jugglers .... 87-13o 



CHAPTER IV. 

Clairvoyance a Spiritual Faculty. 

More Objections — A. K. Wallace — Dr. Elliotson — William 
White — Our Visit to Dr. Ashburner — J. F. Deleuze — Dr. 
Georget's Posthumous Testimony — Analysis of Clairvoyance 
— Importance of Objective Phenomena — Trance- Speaking 
often at Fault — Deceptive Spirits — Mrs. Eichmond against 
the Scientific Basis — Gross Contradictions — Science the only 
Safeguard — Tyndall's Investigations — William Crookes — 
T. W. Higginson — Darius Lyman on Scientific Specialists — 
John Fiske — Clairvoyance again — Alexis Didier — Houdin's 
Letter — Alexis explains — Hudson Tuttle — Testimony of Dr. 
Carpenter's Brother 131-162 



CHAPTER V. 

Is Spiritual Science Hostile to Religion? 

The Argument from Tradition — John Stuart Mill's Admission 

— System of I. H. Fichte — Theodore Parker on Spiritualism 

— Henry Thomas Buckle — What is Religion? — Coleridge — 
Primitive Christianity — Science and Religion — Howells — 
Phenomenon of Christ's Reappearance — Reply to Weiss — 
Form-Manifestations — Dr. Gully — Author's Experience in 
Spirit-Identity — Materialization — Holyoake — Thackeray — 
Our Basis unassailable 163-195 



CHAPTER VI. 

Phenomenal Proofs. — The Spirit-Body. 

The Spirk-Hand — Full-Form Manifestations — Testimony of Dr. 
Gardner, Dr. Wilkinson, &c. — Burnham describes Forma- 
tion of Spirit- Hand— Calmet's Remarkable Testimony — Wil- 
lis's Account of the Stabbing of a Spirit-Hand — Early Egyp- 
tian Testimony — What is Matter? — Levitation — St. The- 
resa — William Fishbough — Charles Bonnet — Dr. J. W. 
Draper — The German Physicists — Assertions of Clairvoy- 



:: 








- 

Ti- 



12 CONTENTS. 



Clifford — Tiedemann's Theory — Admiral Beaufort on 
Drowning — The Mind a Multiplex Unity — Reply to Lewes 

— Case of Rev. Mr. Tennant — Tacts of Idiocy — Agassiz 
and Dr. Brown-Sequard — Abererombie -— Swedenborg on the 
Inner Memory — J. Le Conte — Maudsley — No Unconscious 
Cerebration — Jacobi, Schelling, Plotinus, Lessing— Discrete 
States — Tbe Theory applied to Spirits — Philosophy of the 
Unconscious — Hartmann — His Unconscious Deity conscious 

— Kirchman's Analysis . . . . . . 270-294 



CHAPTER X. 

The Unseen World a Reality. 

Undiscriminating Antagonism — More Danger from ignoring 
than from investigating — Objections of David Swing — Facts 
in Confutation — Biblical Testimony — Swedenborgian Objec- 
tions — What Rev. Mr. Mercer has to say — Theism of Spir- 
itualism compared — Desire for Continuous Life — Tempera- 
mental Differences — Spurious Phenomena as related to Gen- 
uine — Kant's Prediction of Intercommunication — He antici- 
pates our Proofs — Shelley a Spiritualist — His Letter to 
Godwin — George Eliot — Reply to Leslie Stephen . 295-321 



CHAPTER XI. 

The Sentiment of Immortality. 

Indifference to Life's Continuance — Effects of a False Psy- 
chology — The Will and the Temperament — Author's Ac- 
quaintance with Miss Martineau — Her Idiosyncrasies — Wm. 
Humboldt on a Future Life — Bradlaugh — His Discussion 
with Burns — Bigotry in Secularism — Genesis of Belief in 
Spirits — David F. Strauss — His Dismay at Life's Contin- 
uance — The Alarm superfluous — Felix Adler on Immor- 
tality — Not too much, but too little — The " Lust " for a Fu- 
ture Life — Fallacies of Adler and Emerson — Goethe's Demo- 
niac Men — Buckle — Hortense Bonaparte — Col. R. G. In- 
gersol on his Brother's Death— Clifford . . . 322-333 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Great Generalization. 

Theism in the Light of Spiritualism — The Divine Personality 
— Prayer — Doctrine of Spheres — Psychometry — Illustra- 
tive Facts — Dangerous Assumptions — Object-Souls — In- 
cautious Investigations — Concluding Reflections . . 334-349 

APPENDIX 351 



THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS 



SPIEITUALISM 



CHAPTER I. 

THE BASIS. CLAIRVOYANCE AND DIRECT WRITING. 

The great facts of clairvoyance, and direct, independent 
writing, have been so widely demonstrated, and are so 
clearly demonstrable, under proper conditions, that no 
thorough, sincere investigator now disputes their occur- 
rence. The conditions under which the} T have taken place 
have been such as to rule out all possibility of fraud. New 
testimony in respect to them is offered every day, from 
every quarter of the globe. Representing, as they do, both 
the physical and the mental sides of many analogous phe- 
nomena, they may be fairly selected as typical facts, now 
placed beyond dispute, and affording a basis of certainty 
for a psycho-plrysical science, warranting an implicit belief 
in immortality. 

"It is a question, in the first instance, of evidence; it 
then follows, to explain, so far as we can, such facts as 
may have been established." So wrote the eminent Eng- 
lish civilian and prime minister, William E. Gladstone, Octo- 
ber 16, 1878, in respect to these phenomena. 

This is the rational view of the subject. There are certain 
specialists, however, in sciences quite distinct from that of 

13 



14 IMMORTAL LIFE 

psj^cho-physical phenomena, who assert that no amount of 
human evidence could make credible to them facts like 
clairvoyance and direct writing. Dr. William B. Carpen- 
ter, of England, disregarding the testimoi^ of his brother, 
the late Philip Pearsall Carpenter, an eminent naturalist, 
who satisfied himself while in America of the basic truths 
of Spiritualism,* tells us that our common sense ought to 
contradict our senses when these testify to such marvels. 
And there are grave doctors of medicine, such as Richet, 
Hammond, and Beard, who declare persistently, through 
the " Popular Science Monthly," one, that " no well-demon- 
strated fact has ever permitted us to conclude that such a 
thing as double sight, or clairvoyance, exists ; " the other 
two, that there never was a case of clairvoyance in the 
world's history. When men start with the declaration that 
no amount of human testimony shall prove to them the 
occurrence of a natural phenomenon, the general conclu- 
sion will be, that their concurrence in regard to any fact is 
not important to the interests of science. 

Modern Spiritualism has its reason-for-being in well- 
established facts j not onfy of the past, as far back as his- 
tory extends, but of the present. For these, throughout 
the ages, but one explanation, accounting for them in their 
aggregate, has yet been found : it is that which refers 
them to high preterhuman or supra-material powers, ex- 
erted either unconsciously and abnormally by a so-called 
human subject, or put forth by invisible beings, manifest- 
ing intelligence and the ability to overcome material im- 
pediments, not superable b}^ any plrysical means known to 
science. 

The word spiritual is not here erupted as a sufficient 
solution of the mystery, or as intimating a distinction be- 
tween tiling and nothing. The very etj'mology of the word 

* See "Memoirs of P. P. Carpenter, by his brother, Russell Laut Carpenter. 
London: C. Keagan Paul, 1880." 






AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 15 

spirit (spiritus, breath) shows that something occupying 
space, though attenuated perhaps to invisibility, is intended. 
But there is a confusion still in the use of the word ; for 
it is applied by different thinkers to signify not only the 
organic spirit-form and its constituents, but its inner es- 
sence, — that which knows and thinks and is the synonyme 
of mind, or what the French call esprit. 

According to Leibnitz, the essence of all being, whether 
mind or matter, is force. The whole universe, bodies as 
well as minds, is made up of monads, or ultimate atoms, 
homogeneous in essence, but endowed by the Creator with 
certain powers, and developed in degrees infinitely diverse. 
Thus the changes which the monad undergoes are only the 
gradual and successive evolutions of its own internal powers. 
Every monad having both body and soul, but being in itself 
a simple, indestructible essence, the whole material world, 
even in its inorganic parts, is animated throughout. Thus 
matter is but an expression of force, and force is the mode 
of action of that which exists and is alone persistent. Mate- 
rial forms have no stability. An organism is a temporary 
form, from which there is a continual efflux of particles. 
It is like the flame of a lamp, being ceaselessly fed as it 
ceaselessly wastes away. The something underlying all phe- 
nomenal existence is persistent. Matter, as we know it, is 
incapable of acting of itself ; it must be acted upon ; but 
this energy underlying and fashioning all forms is the same 
to-day as yesterday. The matter passes indifferently from 
mould to mould, retaining no character of individuality. 
Spirit alone can act ; matter is but the result of the act. 

Thus in the system of Leibnitz the substantial does not 
belong to organs, but to their original elements. Matter, in 
the vulgar sense, as something conceived to be without 
mind, does not exist. There is no death. That which is 
called death is only the soul losing a part of the monads 
which compose the mechanism of its earthly body, the 



16 IMMORTAL LIFE 

living elements of which go back to a condition similar to 
that in which they were before they came upon the theatre 
of the world. Thus the immortality of the individual is 
secure. In giving the monad a body, Leibnitz departs from 
the traditional conception of corporeality. The body of the 
monad is not bod} 7 in the ordinary sense of the word, but a 
force. 

Thus nothing really dies ; all exists, and is only trans- 
formed. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. 
He is the Primitive Monad, the Primitive Substance ; all 
other monads are its figurations. 

Are the souls of the lower animals immortal ? Yes ; they 
have sensation and memory. Every soul is a monad, for 
the power possessed by every soul to act on itself proves its 
substantiality , and all substances are monads. That which 
appears to us as a body is in reality and substantially an 
aggregate of many monads. The materiality through which 
they express themselves being but a transient phenomenon, 
it is only in consequence of the confusion in our sensuous 
perceptions that this plurality presents itself to us as a con- 
tinuous whole, v Plants and minerals are, as it were, sleep- 
ing monads with unconscious ideas ; in plants these ideas 
are formative vital forces. 

" I am filled with astonishment," saj^s Leibnitz, l ' at the 
nature of the human mind, of whose powers and capabil- 
ities we have no adequate conception." There is much in 
Spiritualism that is in harmony with his views. The funda- 
mental idea of his philosophical s} r stem is, that the spiritual 
or theologico-teleological conception of the world should 
not exclude the plrysico-mechanical conception, but that the 
two should be united. Thus he seems to have anticipated 
the attempt of the pseudo-science, represented b} r Haeckel, 
Huxlej^, Clifford, and others, to find in matter and mechan- 
ism an explanation of all mental phenomena. He argues 
that particular phenomena can and must be mechanically 



AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 17 

explained ; but that we should not, at the same time, be 
unmindful of their designs, which Providence is able to 
accomplish by the very use of mechanical means; that the 
principles of physics and mechanics themselves depend 
on the direction of a Supreme Intelligence, and can only 
be explained ivhen we take that intelligence into consider- 
ation. 

This is one of the strong points in Leibnitz's s}'stem. 
Reason is not individual ; it is universal and absolute, and 
consequently infallible. There are sophists who dispute 
this, and who say they know only by experience that a 
whole is greater than a part ; and that, in a world of which 
they have no experience, two and two may make five. Not 
all are free who scoff at fetters ; and the sophists here stul- 
tify their own proposition. The human effort to reason may, 
according to Leibnitz, often be a failure, but the eternal 
principle of human reason must be nothing less than divine 
reason. Every serious conviction must cover a concealed 
faith in thought, in reason, in God. Experience cannot 
account for innate principles ; on the contrary, innate prin- 
ciples are required to account for the treasures of expe- 
rience. 

The proved phenomena, indicative of the operation of an 
intelligent force outside of any visible organism, have been 
discredited, on various pretences, by the mnny who have 
not had leisure or inclination to carry out a faithful investi- 
gation. The truly marvellous character of some of the 
phenomena has provoked incredulity ; the apparent frauds 
with which mediums, supposed to be genuine, have been 
frequently charged, have excited a proper distrust ; the 
extraordinary feats sometimes performed b}^ individuals 
claiming to be "exposers" of Spiritualism, and the au- 
dacity of their assertions, have confounded not a few whose 
knowledge of the subject was limited. 

The idea that because of the marvellousness of an occur- 
2 



18 



IMMORTAL LIFE 



rence the laws of nature have been violated is, when ana- 
lyzed, a mere superstition. A medium is lifted to the ceil- 
ing, but the law of gravitation is no more violated in the 
act than it is when we jump a ditch. Admit the theory of 
a spirit-force not subject to the law, and the fact becomes 
credible. The frauds charged upon approved mediums, like 
Florence Cook, Miss Wood, Mr. Williams, and others, raise 
questions, the answer to which will be naturally scouted by 
those not intimately acquainted with the history of the phe- 
nomena. I will here only intimate what intelligent investi- 
gators accept as the solution of some, at least, of the cases 
in which mediums, previously and subsequently known to 
be genuine, have been caught in what seemed prima facie 
frauds. 

The influences affecting the phenomena are extremely 
subtile and imperfectly known. But I have repeatedly 
learned this from practical study and experience : ^The un- 
uttered thoughts, the will, the animus, of persons promis- 
cuously present at a sitting for phenomena, have an effect 
upon their character and facility of production, which is 
none the less pjotent because occult and incredible to the 
unprepared mind"; I have known a medium — whose hon- 
esty was never questioned, and in whose presence the 
most indubitable phenomena would readily occur under 
the severest test conditions — to be medially paralyzed by 
the presence of two or three persons, each bringing perhaps 
an adverse spiritual environment, all vehemently opposed 
to the success of the experiment, and not only intent on 
the detection of fraud, but earnestly hoping to find it. Ad- 
mitting the Spiritual theory, is it unreasonable to suppose 
that such persons may have brought influences which, if 
the medium had not intuitively resisted them, would have 
so affected her as to confirm their own unbelief and sus- 
picions of trick? That this has been often done where the 
transfigured body of the medium has been put forward as 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 19 

a spirit-form, is more than probable.* If we can believe 
the testimony of careful investigators both in Europe and 
America, the trick is not an uncommon one. The best way, 
however, for the novice, when absolute tests are wanted, is 
to trust neither spirit nor medium, but to exact conditions, 
if he can get them, which will be a guaranty against mis- 
construction or deception, whether from the supposed spirit- 
world or this. 

That genuine mediums may sometimes purposety resort 
! to fraud in cases where the supersensual power producing 
the phenomena is not readily available, is highly probable. 
There is, first, the temptation of exciting an exaggerated 
estimate of one's ready mediumship ; and there is, sec- 
ondly, the temptation of getting money which might be 
refused in the event of failure. Most mediums are de- 
pendent on the exhibition of their powers for a support ; 
and if they sometimes supplement real phenomena by de- 
vices of their own, it must not be taken always as verif}'- 
ing the maxim, False in one thing, false in all.-f That the 
charge of fraud is often the result of sheer ignorance on the 
part of the accuser, has been repeatedly proved. He has 
jumped to conclusions, sincere enough, but which a little 

* Allan Kardec (the nom de plume of L. D. H. Rivail) relates, in his " Book 
on Mediums," a case of transfiguration, or change of aspect, of a living body. 
In the suburbs of St. Etienne (1R58-9), a young girl of fifteen had the faculty of 
taking on, at certain times, all the appearances of certain persons dead. The 
phenomenon was renewed hundreds of times. On several occasions she took 
the appearance of her deceased brother, presenting not only his face, but the 
height, size, and weight of his body. 

t An English Spiritualist, well versed in the phenomena, writes (November, 
1878) : " I go so far as to say that a sensitive medium may, in his normal state, 
be impelled to trick through the agency of his surroundings. He is more to be 
pitied than condemned. I have sat at public dark seances with Williams, Home, 
Eglinton, Bastian, and Taylor; and I have also seen what I consider real mani- 
festations. Hundreds of others have seen the same in their own private resi- 
dences, with the same mediums, and under circumstances where trick was im- 
possible. Such being the case, I do not think a person who is a real susceptible 
would risk his livelihood knowingly by a trick palpable and easy of detection. 
The higher the susceptibility, the more room is there for trick. Often, if the 
sitting is too long, and the medium exhausted, low influences will rush in." 



20 IMMOETAL LIFE 

more knowledge on his part would have shown to be doubt- 
ful or fallacious. 

With regard to the so-called " exposers " of Spiritualism, 
it has occasionally happened that a person with some little 
medial power, not being able to get a living by the display 
of it, or becoming disaffected towards Spiritualists as neg- 
lectful of his claims, has done his best to get the patron- 
age of the opponents of the phenomena. If he has a glib 
tongue, a plenty of what the profane call cheek, and some 
little skill in sleight-of-hand, he may easily persuade the 
inexperienced that some of his tricks are real duplicates 
of medial phenomena. In regard to those that are inex- 
plicable as human tricks, he ma}^ with the aid of a cabinet 
or a curtain, do things in which the co-operation of a low 
order of spirits may be the real explanation. In such cases 
he always has an excuse ready for not exhibiting in the 
light to an audience his modus operandi. He will sa} r that 
he will explain it at some future time ; or that he cannot 
afford to disclose his secret, so long as he can make money 
by it. Several of these impostors have succeeded in at- 
tracting large audiences and getting from the enemies of 
Spiritualism the pecuniar}" aid which the}' could not get 
from the friends. 

Any " exposer" who professes to know that clairvoyance 
^-nd pneumatography are demonstrable tricks, may be safely 
set down as either self-deceived or wantonly a deceiver. 
His pretence that the}" are accomplished by sleight-of-hand 
is a mere assumption, and he generally knows it to be un- 
true. Repeatedly during the last thirty-three years I have 
had letters of caution from friendly persons, who had great 
confidence in their own sagacity, informing me that certain 
phenomena I had proclaimed as genuine had been proved 
by some itinerant "exposer" to be tricks. In every in- 
stance the " exposer" turned out to be either an impostor 
or a mere "joker" and pretender; and up to this time no 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 21 

one of the phenomena generally accredited by careful and 
experienced investigators all over the world has been 
shaken from its basis of actual truth. 

The fact that many persons calling themselves Spiritual- 
ists have prejudiced their cause by seeking medial light on 
business or domestic matters, properly under the jurisdic- 
tion of their own reason and sense of right, has given rise 
to a great amount of prejudice among those who have not 
patiently investigated the various phenomena for them- 
selves. If the inquirer really wants the truth, he will soon 
divest himself of the objections which the eager credulity 
of novices, or the frauds of mercenarj 7 mediums, ma}^ have 
provoked. He will learn that there are genuine phenom- 
ena, justifying the belief in a force preterhuman and 
spiritual. If the great subject has been abused, it is the 
fault of those who have kept aloof from it. 

An eminent jurist, occupying one of the highest judicial 
positions within the gift of the people of his State, writes 
as follows, under date of July 10, 1880 : 

"My first attempts at investigation ended in a con- 
sciousness of having been imposed upon by fraud ; and the 
dangerous and immoral principles avowed b} T those seem- 
ing to be leaders in the cause, prevented me for 3 r ears from 
having anything more to do with it. But within the last 
six years, the cause having been purified of some of its 
excrescences, the light has come to me unsought. Having 
been accustomed for thirty years to deal with, and the last 
twelve 3'ears to weigh evidence, I have given to the subject 
my best faculties, always under the dominion of an inborn 
skeptical nature, and have become thoroughly satisfied as 
to the two great elementary facts, viz. : a continued ex- 
istence after death, and that those who have gone before 
may communicate with persons in the flesh. In being 
brought to that conclusion, I have yielded only to that 
which, being scanned as evidence, would bear the most 
rigid and skeptical scrutiny from the solitary standpoint of 
reason, unswayed b} T credulity or superstition." 



22 IMMORTAL LIFE 

The Spiritualist's theory is, that life is continuous ; that 
the word immortal must be taken in its etymological sense 
as not-dying. Continuity of being must then be a natural 
effect of present causes. Thus the inquiry into the 
grounds for a belief in the existence of spiritual organs 
and powers in our human complex, alreadj' manifesting 
their operation in the earth-life, and forming the basis of 
life common to this state of being and the next, becomes a 
strictly scientific and experimental process, dealing with 
the finer and more recondite parts of the science of phys- 
iology, or with the ps3 7 cho-physiological developments of 
our mixed nature. It is because the fact of a future life 
has been confounded with speculative theological or reli- 
gious questions, that it has shared their reputation as 
something transcending the verification of science. 

There are pious persons who declare that but for the 
authority of the Bible, they should have no ground for 
belief either in God or in a future life. On this point, 
John Page Hopps eloquently remarks : 

" What can at present be said to people whose concep- 
tion of a future life is the rising again of an exterminated 
body ? — or who, without reflection, and as by a coarse animal 
instinct, laugh to scorn the assertion that a spirit is a 
greater reality than a body? — or who tell us they must give 
up belief in immortality altogether, if the texts of Scrip- 
ture the} 7 rely upon are in a book that is not infallible. It 
does not matter how good, or devout, or otherwise culti- 
vated these people are ; their ideas concerning spirit and 
spirit-life show that in relation to this tremendous subject 
they are only children. . . . The first thing to do is to take 
the whole subject out of the realm of mysteiy, unreality, 
fantasy, and awe, and to make it the object of cool thought, 
and, if possible, of scientific experiment." 

And this is precisely what the intelligence manifesting 
itself through these so-called spiritual phenomena seems to 
be trying to make us do. 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 23 

" Spiritualism," says the late Dr. Hallock, "is no new 
problem that ought to have taken the disciples of science 
by surprise : it has rapped at the door of every thinker 
throughout the ages for a solution. Wanting it, the pop- 
ular thought, misdirected by a theology that was stone- 
blind and remains so, has invested the immortality of its 
own faith with grave-clothes, and converted it into a scare- 
crow, transforming the most beautiful and sublime process 
whereby humanity is glorified, into a ghastly skeleton, 
which its ignorance has named death, and converted it into 
an object of the profoundest horror. It was for science to 
strip these rags from the immortal spirit. Why has it not 
been done?" 

The facts which have been conclusively substantiated by 
the somnambulic, mesmeric, and spiritualistic phenomena, 
all forming a related group, of the last hundred } T ears, are 
regarded as accounting for and corroborating the persistent 
belief among all races of men, in all ages, that, notwith- 
standing the dissolution of his physical husk, the individual 
man, with all the faculties pertaining to his mental, moral, 
and emotional nature, survives, and, under right condi- 
tions, can give proofs of this survival to those whom he 
left behind on earth. All theories of the genesis of the 
belief in immortality, which do not admit, as the important 
original factor, a knowledge, got by the experimental 
method, of actual phenomena, objective and subjective, 
are defective and delusive. 

"The immortality of the soul," says Mr. A. M. Fair- 
bairn, " though a primary, can hardly be considered a prim- 
itive religious belief. It involves conceptions at once too 
abstract and positive to be intelligible to primitive man, 
and what he cannot conceive he cannot believe." 

Spiritualism contradicts this assumption. A life here- 
after was conceivable to the primitive man because he had 
objective proofs of the existence of his departed relatives 



24 IMMORTAL LIFE 

and friends in organisms of new and enlarged power. It 
required no metaph3 T sical reasoning to convince him of this 
fact, any more than of any equally mysterious fact in 
nature, confirmed by the evidence of his senses and by his 
limited reasoning powers. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the Fortnightly Review, May 1, 
1870, expresses his opinion that the belief in a double per- 
sonality may have originated among savages from seeing 
their moving shadows, or the reflection of their faces in the 
water ; and for a corroboration of this fantastic notion, he 
refers to the reluctance which certain savages have evinced 
to having their portraits taken. That there are fools 
among savages as well as among civilized races is not to 
be doubted ; but it is an arbitrary assumption to suppose 
that savages generally are so unobservant of cause and 
effect as to entertain false notions in regard to the cause of 
a shadow, whether moving or stationary. The large col- 
lection of portraits of eminent chiefs of Indian tribes, in 
possession of the United States government, is a proof 
that their representative men do not object to having their 
likenesses taken. 

All such far-fetched attempts at explanation proceed 
from an ignorance of the fact that nearly all the savage 
races have had frequent experience in objective spiritual 
phenomena, and that this is the reason why so few of them 
disbelieve in a dual personalhry. The phenomenon of pal- 
pable form-manifestations by supposed spirits is well 
known to the North American Indians. Of this I am 
assured by my correspondent, Mr. Granville T. Sproat, a 
government agent long resident among the Indians of Lake 
Superior, and who has testified publicly to the fact. Intel- 
ligent Indians were fully persuaded that their deceased 
friends had reappeared palpably, and at times joined in 
their dances. 

As far back as history goes, the power of divination and 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 25 

clairvoyance has been regarded by faithful investigators 
either as a faculty of the human soul developed in some of 
its states, under peculiar conditions, or else an indication 
of independent spirit action. From Pythagoras to Plato, 
from Plato to Plutarch, and from Plutarch to tens of thou- 
sands of competent witnesses in the nineteenth century, 
the phenomena have been admitted. " Si divlnatio est dii 
sunt" (if there is divination, there are gods, or spirits), is 
an old Latin proverb. The deduction is legitimate. 

But there are physical phenomena supplementing and 
confirming those indicating transcendent faculties of per- 
ception. Consider the one stupendous fact of pneumatog- 
raphy,* or independent writing. I hold out a clean slate, 
or I put a sheet of blank paper in a drawer, which I lock, 
and in a few seconds the slate, or the paper, is covered 
with intelligible writing. Do you say it is a physical im- 
possibilhVy ? That may be. But as it takes place, — our 
senses and our common sense testifying to the fact, — then 
it may be a spiritual or psycho-physical possibility ; that 
is, it is not to be explained by any purely physical, or me- 
chanical, or material process known to the most advanced 
science, or conceivable as independent of mind. 

"What pretence have I," says John Wesley, "to deny 
well-attested facts because I cannot comprehend them?" 
One of the capital objections is this: "Did you ever see 
an apparition yourself?" "No; nor did I ever see a 
murder, yet I believe there is such a thing." Wesley lived 
to see what he believed to be an apparition, on three 
occasions. 

If the fact of independent writing be disputed, those 
who bear testimony to it must be regarded either as menda- 



* I use the word as Kardec does, to designate writing supposed to be exe- 
cuted fly spiritual power. The term psychography is used to designate both 
this and writing by the hands of mediums under the supposed influence of 
some spirit. 



26 IMMORTAL LIFE 

cious or under an hallucination. But when the whole char- 
acter and extent of the testimony to the momentous fact 
are fairly estimated, the attempt to get rid of it by charging 
falsehood or imbecility on the tens of thousands of wit- 
nesses, will be regarded by judicial minds as a presump- 
tuous evasion, in direct conflict with the principles of 
experimental science. 

"Science," says John Stuart Mill, "is a collection of 
truths. The language of science is, This is, or, This is 
not ; This does, or does not happen. Science takes cogni- 
zance of a phenomenon, and endeavors to discover its law." 

We lay stress on this proved fact of pneumatography, 
for it is one in which there has been, and need be, no 
experimental flaw. If it is rejected, it must, I repeat, be 
rejected on principles inconsistent with the experimental 
methods of science itself. It is so conclusive as a proof in 
broad daylight of mind independent of a visible organ- 
ism, — of the action of an intelligent force outside of the 
human bod} T , and often operating twenty feet or more dis- 
tant from it, under conditions the most simple and satisfae- 
tor3 r , — and it is so easily verifiable, — that nothing but 
that extreme incredulhry, which is the equivalent of a fat- 
uous credulity, can cause a person to doubt the occurrence 
of the phenomenon after once witnessing it, or, indeed, 
after fairly estimating the testimony in its behalf. 

" One good experiment," says Sir Humphre}^ Davy, u is 
of more value than the ingenuity of a brain like Newton's." 
Let me briefty relate what I have elsewhere recorded in 
detail, namely, my own personal experience. I give it not 
as being conclusive, absolutely by itself, but as conclusive 
relatively to the same experience got by thousands of com- 
petent observers, and by many eminent men of science in 
all parts of the world. I took an entirely new, unused 
slate, which I had bought twenty minutes before, to the 
medium, Charles E. Watkins, in Boston, Sept. 18, 1877. 



AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 27 

The slate was what is called a book-slate, and was enclosed 
in stiff pasteboard covers. I went well aware of all the 
reports unfavorable to mediums in general and to this one 
in particular. 

After manifesting his clairvoyance by telling me what 
was written on some dozen slips of paper, which I had 
rolled tightly into pellets — intelligence which he could not 
have got from my mind, inasmuch as I could not distin- 
guish one pellet from another, — he permitted me to take 
my own slate and hold it out away from him in my left 
hand. He had dropped on the upper surface of the book- 
slate a piece of slate-pencil not so large as half of a grain 
of rice. He sat three feet from me, and did not once 
touch the slate. Although there had been no opportunity 
of his even making a mark on it without my knowledge, I 
satisfied myself once more, before I held it out, that it was 
entirely clean. Instantly there was a sound as of the 
grating of a pencil, and in less than ten seconds there was 
a rap, apparently on the slate. I uncovered it, and there 
was the name of a departed friend, Anna Cora Mo watt. 
This experiment I repeated several times with the same 
success, getting names and messages from friends, which 
would have been none the less»extraordinary if the medium 
had known them and their names, which he unquestionably 
did not. 

In one instance, at the same sitting, I got a message of 
fifty -two words, written with preterhuman celerity. The 
writing was neat and legible. I have it still uneffaced. 
The medium and m3 T self were the only persons present, 
and the noonday sun streamed into the room. There was 
no escape from the knowledge that a great phenomenon, 
involving both clairvo}~ance and intelligent motion, without 
manual, mechanical, or chemical appliance, had taken 
place in my presence. If true — if I was not under an hal- 
lucination — then no more books need be written to prove 



28 IMMORTAL LIFE 

that the materialism, which would confine all operations of 
mind to a material brain — material in the human sense of 
the word — is an error. If I must reject or question the 
testimony which my senses and my common sense gave me 
on this occasion, then must I regard myself as disqualified 
from testifj'ing to any visible occurrence whatever. No 
Irypothesis of jugglery was within the reach of reason. 
There was no confederate (in the flesh, at least) , and the 
conditions could not have been more rigorously exclusive 
of possible fraud. Nothing depended on the moral charac- 
ter of the medium ; and if he had been caught cheating the 
next day, it would not have affected my convictions, unless 
the modus operandi was so explained that I could see, that 
with the requisite practice and skill, any one could produce 
the same manifestation. 

The phenomenon was not new to me. Man}' 3'ears be- 
fore I had got proofs of independent writing on paper in 
the presence of Colchester, an English medium, who died 
young. But never had I before, while holding my own 
new, clean slate, untouched b} T any other person, got audi- 
ble writing unequivocally independent of any conceivable 
process, plrysical, chemical, or mechanical. If there was 
not corroborative evidence of the most ample kind from 
thousands of other witnesses, some of high scientific repute, 
I might still feel a hesitancy in narrating my own experi- 
ence : the transcendent nature of the fact might awe me 
into silence. But such is its authentication now, that while 
skepticism is always excusable, the outright denial of the 
phenomenon can proceed only from the ignorant or the 
reckless. 

A recent Scotch writer charges against Spiritualists " an 
incapacity to give due value to the enormously important 
evidence of general experience." He writes : "A man duly 
sensible of the enormous improbability that he is a witness 
of a reversal of otherwise invariable sequences, or of the 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 29 

intrusion of a force which does not figure in universal ex- 
perience, can hardly, whatever be his failings, become the 
devoted adherent and expositor of a delusion like Spirit- 
ualism." 

Superficially scanned these seem like words of wisdom : 
but they are in truth as destitute of reason as the in- 
credulity of the tropical chief who would not believe in the 
hardening of water because he had never seen ice. He 
fully appreciated what our critic calls "the enormous im- 
probability " of there being a force which did not figure in 
the experience of himself and his tribe. 

The whole adverse argument may be summed up thus : 
4 ' The negative testimonj' of the many ought to outweigh 
the positive testimony of the few." The negative testi- 
mony of a thousand persons, who have never witnessed a 
case of somnambulism, or the fall of a meteor, ought to 
outweigh the testimony in regard to them of ten careful 
observers ! Where would science be if this principle were 
carried out generally? 

Those persons who scout a fact of nature because it is 
not known and accepted by the majority, are quite as nar- 
row and irrational as the tropical chief in their incredulity. 
" How do we know," asks the late Professor De Morgan, 
" that sequences are to be always invariable ; that what has 
been must always be?" But the argument need not be 
pressed. The Spiritualist is not called on to believe in the 
reversal of invariable sequences. Our phenomena have 
been known to the intelligent few, under whose observation 
they happened to fall, and believed in by the many, in all 
ages of the world, except, perhaps, our own. 

In a posthumous work on Psychology bj^ George Heniy 
Lewes, he remarks : "A deep longing for some direct "proof 
of existence after death has made hundreds of people accept 
the grossest impostures of Spiritualism ; impostures which 
contradicted the most massive experiences of the race, and 



30 IMMORTAL LIFE 

which had nothing to support them save this emotional 
credulhYy acting where direct knowledge was wholty absent." 

That there have been "gross impostures," which have 
deceived even experienced investigators, there can be no 
doubt. The man who has counterfeit monej 7 palmed off 
upon him is not he who disbelieves in money, and refuses 
to take it, good or bad, but he who has reason to know that 
most of the money in use is genuine. But it is directly 
contrary to the truth to sa t y that l ' the most massive experi- 
ences of the race " have been opposed to a belief in spirit- 
ual manifestations. On the contrary, many of the greatest 
men that have dignified the race have been full believers 
in them. The fact is so notorious that I will not at present 
occiuyy space in recording some of their names. 

It is only within the last century and a half, that skep- 
ticism and materialism have been so current as to give even 
a color of truth to the remark of Mr. Lewes. So far is it 
from being true that ' ' emotional credulity " can be credited 
with the conversions, the fact is that a great proportion of 
converts have been from a class so fixed in their incre- 
dulity as to things super-sensual, that only objective proofs 
of the most decisive kind could attract their serious attention. 

According to Mr. Lewes's own confessions, he vacillated 
greatly in his psychological views. Perhaps, had his earth- 
life been protracted a little longer, his conclusions in regard 
to our phenomena, — bitterly opposed as he was to a 
system, which, if true, made rubbish of many of his ingen- 
ious speculations, — might have changed. 

Let me resume the subject of my own personal experiences 
in the psycho-physical phenomena, which, beginning for me 
as far back as the year 1835, have been multiplied up to 
the time of my present writing. On the evening of Satur~ 
da}r, the 13th of March, 1880, the Rev. Joseph Cook came 
to my house, bringing with him four of his friends, two 
gentlemen and two ladies, one his wife. Watkins hat} 



AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 31 

promised to come at Mr. Cook's request (not mine), and 
he was present before Mr. Cook and his party arrived. He 
brought with him Mr. Henry G-. White, a gentleman whose 
parents were well known to me, and who had only the week 
before become acquainted with Mr. Watkins, and tested the 
phenomena in his presence. Finding him deeply interested, 
the medium had brought him, and Mr. White had stopped 
at a shop and purchased five or six small slates. 

I am thus particular in stating the exact relations of Mr. 
White to the experiments, because the only important 
points which struck Mr. Cook as "unsatisfactory," had 
reference to his presence and the fact that Ms slates were 
used, and not those which Mr. Cook had brought, and 
which were encased in thick wooden covers. I can vouch 
for Mr. White that he was really no more "the medium's 
friend " than Mr. Cook himself, and was, like the rest of us, 
merely an earnest seeker after the truth, and as much inter- 
ested as any of us could be in detecting anything like fraud. 

It had been publicly announced that Mr. Cook would, in 
his lecture the following Monday, give the result of his ex- 
periments at my house. The Old South Church in Boston 
was crowded to repletion on the occasion. The seance had 
taken place in my library, nine persons, including myself 
and the medium, being present. Three of the party were 
ladies. Here are the public statements of Mr. Cook, con- 
tained in his lecture of March 15th, 1880. 

The following were the satisfactory points : 

1. Five strong gas jets, four in a chandelier over the 
table and one in a central position on the table, were burn- 
ing all the while in the library where the experiments took 
place. 

2. At no time were the slates on which the abnormal 
writing was produced taken from the sight of any one of 
the nine persons who watched them. The writing was not 
done, as was Slade's in London and at Leipsic, on slates 
held under a table. 



32 IMMORTAL LIFE 

3 . The utmost care was taken by all the observers to see 
that the slates were perfectly clean just before they were 
closed. 

4. During the first experiment, nine persons clasped each 
one hand or two, over and under the two slates. The 
psychic's hands were among the others, and he certainly 
did not remove his hands from this position while the sound 
of the writing was heard. 

5. Each observer had written on a scrap of paper given 
him by the psychic the name, of a deceased friend and a 
question addressed to the person named. All the scraps 
were folded into tight, small pellets and placed in a group 
on the table and then mixed, until I could not tell my 
pellets from others in the collection. Half a dozen of the 
names were correctly given by the psychic, while the pellets 
remained unopened. 

No opinion is ventured here as to the method by which he 
obtained this knowledge. One of the two pellets which I 
had thrown into the group contained the following words : 
"Warner Cook. In what year was my father born?" I 
put in one question which could be answered by any one 
who could read my thoughts. I put in another which 
could not be thus answered, for I did not know the answer 
to it. 

The psychic, who certainly had not seen me fold or write 
the pellet, for he was not in the room at the time, told me 
correctly the name it contained, which was that of my 
grandfather. He told also correctly the name in the second 
pellet. I thought this perhaps merely a case of mind- 
reading. The psychic wrote on a slate, "I wish you to 
know that I can come. I do so long to reach 3-ou. W. C." 
I judged that this perhaps was fraud, although I was told 
it came from a spirit. 

The psychic, however, began to suffer, or assume sin- 
gular contortions, and said they were the results of the 
efforts of a spirit to communicate through him. I very much 
doubted whether he was not acting a part, and watched 
him, as all the rest of the company did, ver} r closely in every 
one of his motions. He placed two slates on a table before 
him, and a hand, palm downward, on each slate. 

He seemed to be making a strong effort of will, and said 
he could not tell whether the experiment would succeed. 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 33 

Biting a small fragment, not much larger than four or five 
times the size of the head of a pin, from the top of a slate 
pencil, he placed the bit on one of the slates, and called on 
us all to see that both surfaces were clean. This we did in 
the full light of five gas burners, to our perfect satisfaction. 
The ps}^chic then shut the slates with the fragment between 
them, and required us all to grasp the edges of the slates. 
He drew my hands into a position near his, and made 
several strokes over the back of one of them. Meanwhile, 
his face showed strong efforts of will ; his whole counte- 
nance energized ; he seemed to be in an agon}' of volition ; 
his features changed their expression to one of great vigor 
and determination : and yet, while this look was kept up he 
was shedding tears. It was in this mood of the psychic 
that the audible writing began and continued. 

6. While a dozen hands in full light were tightly clasped 
about the slates, we all distinctly heard the peculiar grating 
sound of a slate pencil moving between them. I said 
"Hist!" once or twice; and, in a nearly perfect silence, 
we every one of us heard writing going on between the 
surfaces. Afterward we saw the fragment of pencil which 
was used, and noticed that it was worn by the friction of 
writing. 

7. The writing found on one of the slates when they were 
opened was in response to my question, and was as follows : 
" I think in 1812, but am not sure. Warner Cook." 

This date was correct. The doubt expressed in the reply 
did not exist in my own thoughts, for I knew what the 
date was. During the writing I was not thinking of the 
date, however, but very cautiously watching the psychic to 
detect fraud. 

8. In a second experiment the psychic closed the slates 
in our sight, after they had been washed with a wet sponge 
which I had myself procured from one of Mr. Sargent's 
chambers, and had also been heavily rubbed by my hand- 
kerchief in presence of us all, as they lay on the table. 
We were determined that no invisible writing should remain 
on the slates if any had been put there by sleight of hand, 
or previously to the gathering of the company. After they 
had been shut upon the pencil, the ps3~chic, at mj' request, 
placed on them two strong brass clamps, one at each end. 
[Mr. Cook here exhibited to the audience the clamps, hold- 

3 






34 IMMORTAL LIFE 



ing together the slates in question.] Thus arranged, the 
slates were placed by him in my right hand, which I ex- 
tended at arm's length over the back of my chair into the 
open space of the room, while I left my other hand on the 
table. The psj'chic, twice or three times, turned the 
clamped slates over in my hand, and then returned his 
hands to the table, where, with the rest of the hands of the 
company, they were kept constantly in sight. In this posi- 
tion I held the slates a few seconds, and watched both 
them and the psychic. He appeared to be making no par- 
ticular effort of will. When the slates were opened, these 
words were found written on one of their surfaces, in! a 
feminine hand: "God bless you all. I am here. Your 
loving friend,. Fanny Conant." I had hever heard of this 
person, but the name was recognized by several in the 
company as that of a psj T chic now deceased, and lately well 
known in Boston. 

9 . One of the observers who assisted in the experiments 
at my request was my family physician, Dr. F. E. Bundy, 
of Boston, a graduate of the Harvard Medical School — a 
man of great coolness and penetration of judgment, and by 
no means inclined to adopt any spiritualistic theory. 
Another of the observers was Mr. Epes Sargent.* .... Of 
the nine observers, a majority were not only not Spirit- 
ualists, but thoroughly prejudiced against the claims made 
in behalf of the ps3 T chic who led the experiments. Written 
notes of the facts, as they occurred, were taken without an 
instant's delay b}^ Dr. Bund} T and myself. 

10. Among the names correctly read in the closed pellets 
was that of an officer in the regular army, shot dead in one 
of the preliminar} T skirmishes of the battle of the Wilder- 
ness. The editor present knew the officer well, and the 
circumstances of his death. The instant the psychic pro- 
nounced the officer's name, he fell backward with a quick, 
sudden motion, like that of one shot through the heart. 
After a few seconds he wrote the word " Shot," in large 
letters, on the slate. 

11. The hands of the company were so placed on the 
slates in the first experiment, that the theoiy. of fraud by 
the use of a magnetic pencil is inapplicable to the facts. 
One of the observers held an open hand tightly against the 

* The omission here is merely a personal compliment. 



AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 35 

bottom, and another on the top of the slates, which were 
perhaps six or ten inches above the surface of the table as 
it was clasped by the hands. Any magnet concealed in 
the sleeves of the psychic could not have been so used as 
to move the pencil. 

• 12. At the close of the experiments, the company unani- 
mously indorsed a paper drawn up on the spot, and were 
agreed that the theory of fraud would not explain the facts. 
While they differed in opinion as to whether the slate pencil 
was moved b} 7 the will of the psychic, or by that of a spirit 
or spirits acting through him, the observers could not ex- 
plain the writing except by the movement of matter with- 
out contact. 

Report of the Observers of the Sargent Experiment in 
Psychography in Boston, March 13, 1880. 

At the house of Epes Sargent, on the evening of Saturdaj-, 
March 13, the undersigned saw two clean slates placed face 
to face, with a bit of slate pencil between them. We all 
held our hands clasped around the edges of the two slates. 
The hands of Mr. Watkins, the psychic, also clasped the 
slates. In this position we all distinctly heard the pencil 
moving, and on opening the slates found an intelligent 
message in a strong masculine hand, in answer to a ques- 
tion asked by one of the company. 

Afterwards, two slates were clamped together with strong 
brass fixtures, and held at arm's length by Mr. Cook, while 
the rest of the company and the psychic had their hands in 
full view on the table. After a moment of waiting, the 
slates were opened, and a message in a feminine hand was 
found on one of the inner surfaces. There were five lighted 
gas burners in the room at the time. 

We cannot apply to these facts any theory of fraud, and 
we do not see how the writing can be explained unless 
matter, in the slate pencil, was moved without contact. 
F. E. Bundy, M. D. Epes Sargent. John C. Kinney. 
Henry G-. White. Joseph Cook. 

Boston, March 13, 1880. 

Notice now the unsatisfactory points in these experiments : 
1. My attention was several times diverted from watch- 
ing the psychic by his requiring me to put my pencil on the 
pellets and pass it slowly from one to another of them. 



36 IMMORTAL LIFE 

It ought to be stated that he required Mr. Sargent to do 
the same, and if it had been his object to divert the atten- 
tion of those most opposed to admitting his claims, he 
would have done better to have selected Dr. Bundy instead 
of Mr. Sargent, as another gun to spike. Dr. Bundy's 
attention was not diverted for an instant, nor was mine at 
an}^ instant that seemed to me important. 

2. Two or three times the psychic and a friend whom 
he had brought to the room,* left the company and went 
into the hall together, and I did not know what they con- 
ferred about. It is supposed that they left in order that 
the friend might not be regarded as a confederate. 

3. The psychic was easily offended by any test condi- 
tions suggested by the company, although he finally adopted 
the brass clamps which he at first refused to use. 

4. The psychic's friend brought to the room the slates 
which were used, and nry slates were not employed at all 
in the experiments. 

The alleged objection to the use of my slates was that 
they had wood on their backs, and were poor conductors 
of electrical influences. Although clamps on the slates are 
no greater guard than one's hands may be, still they amount 
to something in stating the case to the public . If I had 
suddenly fallen into a trance, or been mesmerized, while 
holding the slates, the clamps would have held their place, 
and some one in the company might not have been in a 
trance, and would have known what happened. 

On the whole, the unsatisfactory points did not appear 
to outweigh the satisfactory ones. In spite of the former, 
the observers agree in professing inability to explain the 
writing unless there was here motion without contact. 

In these experiments, as I beg } r ou to notice, there is 
nothing to decide whether the force which moved the pen- 
cil was exercised by the will of the psychic, or by a spirit, 
or b}^ both. 

We do not presume to say how the motion was caused, 
but only that we do not see how the writing can be ex- 
plained unless matter in the slate pencil was moved without 
contact. 

Of course the latter fact, if established, and even in the 

*This refers to Mr. White, whose relations to the experiments I have already 
explained. 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 37 

absence of knowledge as to whether the force proceeds from 
the psychic or from spirits, overturns utterly the mechanical 
theory of matter, explodes all materialistic Irypotheses. and 
la}^s the basis for transcendental physics, or a new world in 
philosophy. 

Here is the very freshest pamphlet from Germany on 
psychical phenomena. It is written by Leeser, a medical 
candidate at Leipzig UnivershVy, and defends unflinchingly 
the theory that the psychic force explains all these phe- 
nomena, and is under the control of man exclusively. I 
came out of Mr. Sargent's library fully convinced that the 
stress of debate is between that theory and the theory 
adopted by Zollner and Crookes, that the force is under the 
control of both men and spirits. Whatever the ultimate 
result of experiments by experts in the study of psychical 
phenomena may be, it is pretty nearly certain to-day that 
research should concentrate itself upon the double lines of 
investigation indicated by these two rival theories. 

As Mr. Cook has been well abused by some of the reli- 
gious journals for testifying to what he saw, let me add to 
his a subsequent experience of my own. 

On the afternoon of the 8th of June, 1880, Mr. Watkins 
came to my house, and proposed to give me a sitting. As 
the day was a little chilly we went into the dining-room, 
where there was a fire, and sat at the large dining- table 
covered with a green cloth. The dimensions of the room 
are 17 by 19. The only parties present besides myself and 
the medium were Mrs. E. and Miss W., both inmates of 
the family — Miss W. never having seen Mr. Watkins, 
and only entering the room when I called her to take part 
in the sitting. We locked the two doors to avoid interrup- 
tion. On the table we placed seven slates, two bought by 
myself and never used, and one more, the same book-slate 
which I had used at my first interview with the medium in 
1877 ; and four small slates brought by the medium, and 
carefully moistened and wiped by me. Blank paper and 
pencils were also placed on the table. 



38 IMMORTAL LIFE 

We sat on one side of the table during the experiments, 
which were all in broad daylight, while the medium stood 
either on the opposite side, or at the head, or moving about 
the room, so that nearly his whole person could be seen by 
us all the time. First, two of the small slates were placed, 
one on top of the other, with a crumb of slate-pencil be- 
tween, and while we all held them by the rims, the scratch- 
ing of a pencil was instantaneously audible ; and taking 
the top slate from the lower we found on the surface of the 
latter, in large, legible characters, "I am here. Lizzie." 
Previously to the experiment we were all fully satisfied 
that the surfaces were entirely clean. I had washed and 
rubbed them carefully. There was no possible chance for 
a substitution of concealed slates. 

Writing was then got while Miss W. held the slates, and 
the medium, not touching them, stood aloof more than four 
feet. On my own two new and carefully-cleaned slates, 
held out before us by the medium, were written two mes- 
sages — one of ten words, addressed to me and signed with 
my father's name, and one to Miss W. of three words, 
signed with the name of a young departed friend, of whom 
it is not probable the medium had ever heard. In one in- 
stance the two ladies held out each a pair of slates, and 
got writing on them simultaneously, the medium not touch- 
ing them, but standing at the opposite side of the table. 

It was then proposed that my book-slate should be used. 
It already had writing on both sides, which I objected to 
having obliterated. On one side was a letter of sixtj 7- 
words, got some years before through Watkins, and bear- 
ing the name of my sister Lizzie ; and on the other side 
were the words, "Your aunt Amelia is present," got 
through Mr. W. H. Powell, another medium, for direct 
writing.* I finally consented to have the latter inscription 

* A Rochester (N. Y.) correspondent of the Banner of Light, writes in 
that paper of July 17, 1880: " On two occasions, while Mr. Powell was in Roch- 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 39 

obliterated if it could be done by the unknown force ap- 
parently at work. Taking the slate on which the writing 
in large unfaded letters still stood, I shut the leaf, and 
placed it in the hands of the medium, who instantly held it 
out before us all. The scratching sound of a pencil was 
heard, and in less than twelve seconds he handed the book- 
slate back to me. I lifted the leaf; the surface on which 
was the old inscription had been thoroughly cleaned, and 
on it were the words, "My dear brother: I rub this all 
out. Lizzie, 3 r our sister." 

I will not enumerate the many satisfactory proofs of in- 
dependent clairvoyance (not mind-reading) which we got 
during this remarkable sitting. TYizy amounted in number 
to fifteen. It has been said that mind-reading and clair- 
voyance are simply the exercise of one and the same fac- 
ulty ; in the one case there being a perception of thoughts, 
and in the other, of objects. This is not the place to dis- 
cuss the question. I will merely say that the detection of 
a thought may come from a look, or from a movement of 
one brain in sympathetic relations to another, just as the 
vibration of one musical chord affects that of another of 
the same kind, though in a different room. But the detec- 
tion of what is written in a tightry-rolled pellet, the con- 
ester, a figure representing 1 a rose was drawn on the under side of a slate, the 
medium simply passing his finger over its upper surface, not touching it, how- 
ever, the finger at no time being nearer than an inch to the upper surface of 
the slate." The conditions were such as " precluded all possibility of decep- 
tion, fraud, or collusion." Having witnessed the same phenomenon (June 21, 
1879) through the same medium, under strict test conditions, and under the 
blaze of five gas-burners in my own library, with five of my friends watching 
the experiment, I can readily accept this statement as accurate. I still have 
the slate on which the rose was drawn, and the word "Winona" was written 
by some force unknown. I held the slate myself by one of the wooden rims 
during the experiment. A scientific committee of six persons, among whom 
were chemists and physicians, tested the phenomena through Powell, in Phila- 
delphia, in 1879, and reported : " It is one of those peculiar psychological mani- 
festations that we cannot account for." The names of the committee were : 
Dr. Wm. Paine, Dr. Reuben Carter, B. F. Dubois, John P. Hayes, Alfred Law- 
rence. F. J. Keffer. 



40 IMMORTAL LIFE 

tents of which are unknown to the sitter, would seem to be 
an achievement somewhat more difficult and inexplicable 
than thought-reading. Bear in mind that all these experi- 
ments took place in broad daylight, and that the slates and 
the pellets were never out of our sight for a moment. 

The last and crowning incident of the evening was this : 
I had written on a pellet, as yet untouched by the medium, 
the name of my mother. Taking two slates, one placed 
over the other, he first showed us they were clean, and then 
placed them on a small work-table in one corner of the 
room. Then, bethinking himself of more satisfactory con- 
ditions, he gave the same slates (as I carefully satisfied 
myself) to Miss W., went off to the opposite corner of the 
room, a distance of more than twenty-one feet in a diag- 
onal line, allowed us to see that the slates were clean (so 
there could have been no sleight-of-hand substitution) , and 
told Miss W. to place them with her own hands on the 
work-table. As soon as she had done this, and resumed 
her seat, he seemed violently convulsed, and reaching 
across the table from end to end, seized the hand of Miss 
W. The parox3 7 sm lasted but a moment ; the sound of 
writing was heard on the distant slate, and the medium, 
still standing twenty feet off, told Miss W. to take the 
slates and hand them to me. This she did. I took the 
upper from the lower, and there, written legibly, and 
forming seven lines on the slate, were these words : " My 
dear son and daughter, I am here and I must see j t ou 
again. Can't say more now. Loving mother, M. O. S." 

The extraordinary facts in this experiment were : That 
the slates were not touched by the medium after they had 
left my hands till the}^ were brought back to me by one of 
the ladies and I had read the writing ; that I had just pre- 
viously satisfied myself that the surfaces were clean ; and 
that while the direct writing was going on, and could be 



AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 41 

heard, the medium stood at a distance of twenty-two feet 
from the slates. 

Phenomena like these seem to me to knock out of mate- 
rialism its raison d'etre. Where and how can it find an 
explanation ? It is impotent to suggest one consistent with 
its own dogmas. Here are proofs of an intelligent force 
acting outside of a human brain, outside of any visible or- 
ganism. In all ages of the world such a force has been 
compared to the unseen human breath — spiritus. 

In May, 1880, having learned from Mr. Watkins that Mr. 
Hiram Sibley of Rochester, N. Y., a gentleman of wealth, 
had carefully investigated the phenomena, and had offered 
him a large sum of money to disclose " the secret of his 
trick" I wrote to Mr. Sibley for confirmation of the state- 
ment, and got a satisfactor}^ reply, dated May 10th, 1880, 
in which he tells me that he and Judge Shurat had paid 
Watkins a hundred dollars for about ten sittings ; and that 
they got the independent writing in a way to satisfy them 
that some unknown power moved the pencil. Mr. Sibley 
writes : "I offered Mr. Watkins a large sum of money, 
which I proposed to settle on his wife and children, if he 
would disclose the trick (if trick it were) by which the 
manifestation was produced ; and furthermore, I offered to 
give bonds, if he desired it, that I would not divulge his 
secret. I am ready to repeat the offer now to any person 
that can expose or explain the trick, if trick it be." 

This offer of several thousand dollars, though publicly 
made, has never been accepted. The public have been 
told of one ' ' exposer " who went to Mr. Sibley to explain 
how it was all done ; but the conditions he wanted were so 
ludicrously unlike the simple, unconditional way in which 
the phenomena are produced through Watkins, that the 
pretender was dismissed as either an ignoramus or a char- 
latan. The solution of all these pretended exposers is 



42 



IMMORTAL LIFE 



" sleight-of-hand ; " but there is no possibility of any such 
jugglery under the conditions. 

Mr. J. Edwin Hunt, of the City Treasur} 7 Office, Boston, 
who had been an avowed materialist, hearing of Mr. Cook's 
experiences in my library, sought to test their truth. He 
writes, under date of July 11th, 1880, in respect to his 
visit to Mr. Watkins : 



" I came, I saw, and I — was conquered ; that is, I wit- 
nessed in his presence the fact of the intelligent movement 
of matter, without any visible human or other contact. I 
know that I was not deceived. I not only saw the writing* 
after it was written, but heard the pencil moving while it 
was being done. I know that there was no writing upon 
the slates when the pencil was placed between them, and 
the slates were not out of my sight for a second during the 
time I sat with Mr. W. The signature to the communica- 
tion was the name of a personal friend of mine, whose fu- 
neral I had attended some three weeks before, and the com- 
munication was a direct and pertinent answer to a question 
addressed to him, and folded securely up, and the question 
was written a week before I had the sitting. I had never 
seen Mr. W., nor he me, until the day of the sitting, which 
was the last day of March, 1880. He had no means of 
knowing anything about it, and as the question was mixed 
up with eight or ten others, and was not opened until after 
the writing on the slate, I did not know myself what was 
in it until the writing was completed and the pellet was 
opened. In conclusion, I wish to say that as a result of 
this experience of mine, I am satisfied beyond all doubt of 
the existence of an intelligent force outside of the medium 
or the sitter, and believe that the inference is strong and 
almost irresistible that this intelligent force is that of an 
individual human spirit, who once lived in the body." 

Mr. John L. O' Sullivan, formerly U. S. Charge to Port- 
ugal, and a gentleman long personally known to me, has 
published an account of his experiences (May, 1880) with 
Alexander Phillips, a medium aged twenty- three, at his 
rooms, No. 133 West Thirty-sixth Street, New York. My 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 43 

friend of forty years, Dr. J. R. Buchanan, was present. 
Under test conditions, and in full gaslight, they repeatedly 
got the independent writing. Several Latin quotations 
were given ; among the rest the following translation of a 
stanza from Jane Taylor's little nursery poem, beginning 
"Twinkle, twinkle, little star." The writing, small, close, 
and back-handed, was finally deciphered thus : 

" Mica, mica, parva stella, 
Miror quonam sis tarn bella, 
Splendens eminens in illo 
Alto velut gemma ccelo." 

To Mr. O'Sullivan's account of repeated experiments, Dr. 
Buchanan adds his testimony thus : "To the foregoing 
statement of Mr. O'Sullivan I would add my indorsement 
of its absolute and minute correctness." 

I have had the pleasure of some correspondence with Mr. 
Alfred Russell Wallace, the eminent English naturalist. 
He is the same who shares with Mr. Charles Darwin the 
honor of having originated the theory of natural selection. 
He testifies to having witnessed (Sept. 21st, 1877), at a 
private house in Richmond, on the Thames, the phenome- 
non of independent writing in a room where the light was 
sufficient to see every object on the table. Dr. Francis W. 
Monck was the medium. After describing the experiment 
in a letter to the London " Spectator" of Oct. 6th, 1877, 
Mr. Wallace remarks : " The essential features of this ex- 
periment are : That I myself cleaned and tied up the slates ; 
that I kept my hand on them all the time ; that they never 
went out of my sight for a moment ; and that I named the 
word to be written, and the manner of writing it, after they 
ivere thus secured and held by me. I ask, How are these 
facts to be explained, and what interpretation is to be put 
upon them?" Mr. Edward T. Bennett indorses Mr. Wal- 



44 IMMORTAL LIFE 

lace's statement in the remark : " 1 was present on this 
occasion, and certify that Mr. Wallace's account of what 
happened is correct." 

In reference to his experiences with Henry Slade, Mr. 
Wallace testifies as follows : 

" Writing came upon the upper part of the slate, when 
I myself held it pressed close up to the under side of the 
table, both Dr. Slade's hands being upon the table in con- 
tact with my other hand. The writing was audible while 
in progress. This one phenomenon is absolutely conclu- 
sive. It admits of no explanation or imitation by conjuring. 

' ' Writing also came on the under side of the slate while 
laid flat upon the table, Dr. Slade's hand being laid flat on 
it, immediately under my eyes. 

" While Dr. Slade was holding the slate in one hand, the 
other being clasped on mine, a distinct hand rose rapidly 
up and down between the table and nry body ; and, finally, 
while Dr. Slade's hands and mine were both on the centre 
of the table, the further side rose up till it was nearly ver- 
tical, when the whole table rose and turned over on to my 
head. 

" These phenomena occurred in broad daylight, with the 
sun shining into the room, and with no one present but Dr. 
Slade and m} r self. They may be witnessed with slight va- 
riations by any of our men of science, and it is to be hoped 
that those who do not take the trouble to see them will, at 
all events, cease to speak disparagingly of the intellectual 
and perceptive powers of those who, having seen, declare 
them to be realities." 

It is true, as Mr. A. R. Wallace has said, that no man 
of any authority has been known to question the genuine- 
ness of the phenomena after being once thoroughly con- 
vinced of their occurrence. But novices in the investiga- 
tion sometimes fall back in their convictions, after being 
powerfully impressed by the phenomena as they occurred. 
We must not be surprised should this prove to be the case 
with some of the German professors, who, knowing little 



AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 45 

or nothing of the phenomena, were carried away by the 
manifestations through Dr. Slade. Possibly the} 7 may be 
laughed out or reasoned out of their convictions. 

It is not surprising if, when an inexperienced investi- 
gator comes to reason on the phenomena, they should seem 
to him, after a brief conviction of their genuineness, utterly 
incredible. Hence the half-way converts not unfrequently 
turn back. ( It requires a long preparation for a philosopher 
or a physicist to be able, like Fichte, to be reconciled to all 
the facts that conflict with his own past teachings. 

Zollner (born 1834) , and who has recorded the phenomena 
through Slade in some elaborate works, has not retrograded. 
He will perhaps live to find new reasons for the confirma- 
tion of his experiences. 

Immanuel Herman Fichte (1797-1879), son of the famous 
John Gottlieb Fichte, was a Spiritualist long before Slade 
visited Germany. Just before his death he put forth a 
pamphlet, in which he asseverates the fundamental facts, 
and earnestly commends the whole great subject to the 
attention of the scientific and religious world. He ably 
answers Haeckel, the enthusiastic materialist, who de- 
plored the " simplicity" of the eminent German plrysicists 
who "fell into Slade's trap." Fichte asserts the impor- 
tance of the results arrived at, and claims that Slade's 
manifestations belong to the domain of physics. 

Professor Ulrici, of Halle (born 1806), was not a witness 
of the Slade phenomena, though he partially accepted them, 
on testimony, as confirming much in his own philosophical 
speculations. Wundt's attack, however, seems to have 
caused him to draw back a little. He evidently lacked 
that force of conviction which actual personal knowledge 
of the phenomena, continued through many years, must 
always inspire. 

Fichte, a resident of Stuttgard, was introduced to the 
phenomenon of independent writing by the late Baron 



46 IMMORTAL LIFE 

Louis Guldenstubbe, who departed this life May 27th, 
1873, at his residence, 29 Rue de Trevise, Paris, in his 
fiftj-third year. He was chiefly known by his researches 
and experiments in pneumatology. Of Swedish origin, he 
belonged to an ancient Scandinavian family of historical 
renown, two of his ancestors of the same name having 
been burnt alive in 1309, in company with Jacques de 
Melay, by order of Pope Clement the Fifth. The baron 
lived a retired life, with his accomplished sister. He is 
affectionately remembered for his noble, gentle, and urbane 
bearing, and for his numerous unassuming charities. His 
principal work, " La Realite des Esprits, et le Phenomene 
merveilleux de leur ficriture Directe," was published in 
Paris, by D. Franck, in 1857. 

The baron passed the winter of 1869-70 at Stuttgard. 
A man of culture, independent in his circumstances, and 
of high social position, he was probably himself a medium, 
though unconscious of the fact. He got the independent 
writing, but thought it came as an answer to his prayers 
for a proof of immortality. My friend, the Rev. William 
Mountford, of Boston, who knew the baron and witnessed 
remarkable physical phenomena in his presence, tells me 
he was an excellent Hebrew scholar and a sincere student 
of psychic evidences ; by no means an enthusiast, but a 
modest, earnest, truth-seeking gentleman. The testimony 
of such a person to a palpable, objective phenomenon, 
with no medium present, unless he was one himself, is 
exceptionally precious. 

Guldenstubbe dedicates his volume to the Count de 
Szapary, Count D'Ourches, and General Baron de Bre- 
wern, three well-known gentlemen, who repeatedly wit- 
nessed the phenomenon of independent writing in his pres- 
ence, sometimes in his own house, and sometimes in old 
churches and by the side of ancient tombs. The writing 
was on sheets of paper, which, with a view to scientific 






AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 47 

verification, were properly marked by the witnesses. The 
phenomena began August 13, 1856, and Guldenstubbe 
refers to them in his dedicatory preface as ' ' more brutally 
conclusive than all reasonings — plus brutalement concluant 
que tous les raisonnements." 

"These phenomena," he tells us, are now fixed "upon 
an immovable basis of facts ; " that ' ' henceforth the im- 
mortality of the soul can be regarded as a fact of science," 
and that Spiritualism " throws a bridge from our world to 
the invisible." 

" You know, gentlemen," he saj T s in his dedication, "that 
my whole life has been devoted to the study of the super- 
natural,* aud of its relations to visible and material nature. 
I have regarded as the great end and object of my life the 
irreversible demonstration of the immortality of the soul, 
of the direct intervention of spirits, of revelation and of 
miracle, by the experimental method. 

"The phenomena of inspiration, of trance, of invisible me- 
dial attraction, of mysterious raps, and the movement of 
inert, inanimate objects, have helped me on in encouraging 
me to persevere in my arduous and arid researches ; but 
all these manifestations are far from being con«lusive. 
These phenomena can, at the most, give us only a reve- 
lation of forces and of unknown laws. It is only the 
direct writing which reveals to us the reality of an invisi- 
ble world, whence emanate religious revelations and mira- 
cles. ♦ . . . Henceforth hope can spring afresh in the heart 
of humanity, — its religious needs in respect to the immor- 
tality of the soul, the basis of all truths, being fully satis- 
fied. . . . Let us remember that in regard to all great 
truths, the more sublime and profound they are, the more 



* The Baron repeatedly uses the word supernatural where Spiritualists 
generally would say superhuman. We have no evidence as yet that the 
so-called spiritual phenomena are not embraced in the sphere of the natural, 
since everything phenomenal may be properly so regarded. 



IMMORTAL LIFE 

they encounter a press of obstacles and are repelled by the 
many. It is only in the issue of the shocks of discussion, 
engaged in by serious and earnest minds which have been 
able to verify the marvellous phenomenon of a direct cor- 
respondence from spirits, that human intelligence, being 
of a progressive nature, can ultimately be influenced to 
admit the truth. . . . 

"Let us advance, then, boldly on this line. We may 
not stay here to witness the cheering da}-, the dawn of 
which appears to us from afar on the horizon, and which 
illustrious geniuses, such as Swedenborg, Bengel, Jung- 
Stilling, and Count Joseph de Maistre, have had the pre- 
sentiment of, and have saluted in the name of a third 
revelation, according to the prophet Joel (chap. ii. 28, 29) : 
i And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out 
my spirit upon all flesh ; and your sons and your daughters 
shall prophesy, } T our old men shall dream dreams, your 
young men shall see visions : and also upon the servants 
and the handmaids in those da}'s will I pour out my spirit.' 

" Our obscure names may be lost under the rubbish and 
the ruins which the ages are continually heaping up, but 
we shall carry with us into another and better phase of 
existence the sweet consolation of having chosen the path 
which leads to God, since that which we represent is of 
the Eternal Essence." 

Among the ocular witnesses of independent writing and 
other phenomena through Guldenstubbe, besides the three 
already mentioned, were M. Delamarre, editor of La Pa- 
trie; M. Choisselat, editor of the Univers; Robert Dale 
Owen, of the United States ; M. Lacordaire, brother of the 
great preacher ; M. cle Bonnechose, the well-known histo- 
rian ; M. Kiorboe, a well-known Swedish painter, resident 
in Paris ; Baron Yon Rosenberg, German ambassador at 
the Court of Wtirtemberg ; Prince Leonide Galitzin, and 
two other representatives of the nobility of Moscow ; Doc- 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 49 

tor Bowron of Paris ; Colonel Kollmann of Paris ; and my 
friend, the Rev. William Mountford of Boston, Mass., 
whose communication to me in respect to the baron I sent 
to the London Spiritualist, where it appeared Dec. 21, 1877. 

On the 4th of October, 1856, the verse, "O death, 
where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" was 
written by an invisible power in Greek, in the presence 
of Count D'Ourches, Dr. Georgii, and Baron Gulden- 
stubbe. A fac-simile of it is given in the volume, from 
which I translate. 

It is impossible to read this work by Guldenstubbe with- 
out being impressed by the intense sincerity, as well as by 
the intelligence and eloquence, of the writer. 

"Here is a book," he says, "which contains the first 
positive elements of the great science of direct communi- 
cation with the supernatural world ; the unique basis of all 
historical religions, from the majestic law of Jehovah, en- 
graved," (as Moses thought,) " by the finger of God him- 
self on the two tablets in presence of Moses, to the words, 
full of a divine unction, of the holy martyr of Calvary ; 
from the Vecla of the Indians to the Zend-Avesta of Zoro- 
aster ; from the mysterious ceremonies of Egypt to the 
oracles of Greece and Rome." 

Guldenstubbe was under a mistake in supposing that he 
was the first in modern times to get direct writing. It 
came with the earliest American phenomena in 1848. It 
was quite common in the manifestations at the Rev. Dr. 
Phelps's house in Stratford, Conn., in 1850-51, as related 
by him in a letter to me which I published at the time in 
the Boston Transcript ; and innumerable instances occurred 
at Hj'desville, Rochester, Buffalo, and Auburn, in the 
United States, before the date of the Paris phenomena. 

Guldenstubbe proceeds to say : " A marvellous discovery 
was made by the author at Paris, Aug. 13, 1856, the day 
when the first experiences, crowned with success, took 
4 



50 IMMOKTAL LIFE 

place : it is that of the direct writing of spirits without any 
intermediary whatever; that is to say, without either me- 
dium or inanimate object." (Here he assumes that he 
himself was not a medium.) "This marvellous phenom- 
enon confirms what Moses says (Exod. xxxi. 18 ; xxxiL 
15, 16 ; xxxiv. 28 ; xxiv. 12 ; Deut. iv. 13 ; v. 22 ; ix. 10 ; 
x. 1-5) concerning the direct revelation of the Decalogue ; 
and what Daniel recounts on the subject of the marvellous 
writing on the wall, which took place during the feast of 
King Belshazzar (Daniel v. 5, &c). 

" The discovery of writing directly supernatural ( ?) is so 
much the more precious, because it can be proved by ex- 
periment repeated at will b}^ the author in presence of the 
incredulous, who can themselves furnish the paper, to 
avoid the absurd objection which a skeptical materialism 
has put forward, that the paper used may have been chem- 
ically prepared. It is precisely in the application of the 
experimental method to direct supernatural ( ?) phenomena 
or miracles, that reside the originality and the validity of this 
discovery, which has no precedent in the annals of human- 
ity ; for hitherto it has not been a quality of miracles to 
admit of reiteration. In order to prove their reality it has 
been necessary to be content with the testimon}- of those 
who have witnessed them. 

"In our da} r , when all the sciences proceed by the 
experimental method, the most clearly verified results of 
observation, and the most ample testimoiry, hardly suffice, 
when an extraordina^ phenomenon, not to be explained 
by known plrysical laws, is in question. Man, spoiled by 
the palpable experiences of the physicists, no more attaches 
faith to historical testimony, above all when it pertains to 
mysterious phenomena revealing the existence of powers 
invisible and superior to the forces and the laws of inert 
matter. 

"To-day, in moral concerns as well as in the exact sci- 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 51 

ences, our age demands facts; and here we give them in 
abundance. More than five hundred experiences have 
been had since the memorable 13th of August, 1856, by 
the author and his two friends, Count D' Ourches and Gen. 
Baron de Brewern. More than fifty persons , supplying 
their own paper, have been enabled to verify the astonish- 
ing phenomenon of direct writing by invisible intelligences. 

' ' Most of our experiences took place in the Hall of An- 
tiques in the Louvre, in the Cathedral of St. Denis, and in 
the different churches and cemeteries of Paris, as well as 
in the author's own apartments, Rue du Chemin de Ver- 
sailles, 74. 

" The lettered public are well aware that the natural sci- 
ences did not make any veritable progress until questions 
by the experimental method were addressed to Nature. 
So it is with Spiritualism : this* science of invisible causes 
can only become a positive science in the same experimen- 
tal way. We must have recourse to this method to beat 
down and reduce to silence the arrogance of those physi- 
cists who have presumed in our day to encroach even upon 
the domain of the moral sciences and the higher philos- 
ophy. Surely there is nothing more absurd than to see 
physicists assume the position of competent judges on a 
question of metaphysics and psycholog} T ." 

Gulclenstubbe, we have seen, did not regard himself 
as a medium, though the pneumatographic and other psy- 
cho-physical phenomena occurred in his presence. Perhaps 
it is on what he claims to be their non-medial character 
that he bases his pretensions as a discoverer. He tells us 
that his first experience in getting spirit-writings was pre- 
ceded by the incessant prayer that he might be instrumen- 
tal in proving the immortalhVy of the soul. He put some 
letter-paper and a sharpened lead-pencil in a little locked 
box, the key of which he always carried about his person. 
To no one did he confide his intention. He waited twelve 



52 IMMORTAL LIFE 

days in vain. Not the least trace of a pencil was there on 
the paper. 

But what was his astonishment when he remarked, on 
the memorable day already named, certain mysterious 
characters traced on the paper. Ten times during the 
same day, at intervals of half an hour, he got the same 
experience, substituting at every trial new pieces of paper. 
Ever}^ time the result was a success. 

On the 14th of August, 1856, he got the same phenom- 
enon twenty times by leaving the box open, and not al- 
lowing it to be out of his sight. It was then that he saw 
that the characters and words in the Esthonian language 
were formed or engraved on the paper without a movement 
of the pencil. From that moment, seeing that a pencil 
was superfluous, he ceased to put it on the paper ; he 
would simply place a blank sheet of paper either on the 
table at his own lodgings, or on the pedestal of some 
antique statue or urn at the Louvre, at Saint Denis, and 
other churches. It was the same in the experiences got in 
the different cemeteries of Paris. 

After having proved satisfactorily to himself the phe- 
nomenon of direct writing b} 7 more than thirty trials, he 
communicated the secret to Count D'Ourches, a well- 
known investigator. The Count witnessed the phenom- 
enon more than forty times, sometimes at his own apart- 
ments, sometimes at the Baron's, sometimes at the Louvre, 
and on the benches which surround the monuments of Pas- 
cal and of Racine in the Montmartre cemetery. Subse- 
quently, in the month of October, the Count, without the 
co-operation of Guldenstubbe, got several direct writings 
from supposed spirits ; among the rest one from his mother, 
who had left this life twenty }^ears before. 

Sixty-seven fac-similes of writings got b} 1- our author are 
given in his book. As to the question, What means do the 
spirits employ in writing? he tells us that the phenomenon 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 53 

proves that the spirit must act directly upon matter, prob- 
ably by mere jorce of will. The celerity with which writings 
are produced, often quicker than human thought, is a con- 
firmation of this theory, which fully accords with my own 
experience. I have known a message of fifty-two words to 
be written on a slate in less than fifteen seconds. Gen- 
eralty, where it is desired that the sound of the movement 
of the pencil shall be heard, the pencil may be used ; but 
this is not alwa} T s known to be the case. 

" During the first fortnight, dating from the day of my 
discovery of direct writing," writes Guldenstubbe, " the 
tables on which the spirits wrote would move about alone, 
and come to rejoin the author in another room, after having 
traversed several apartments. The tables moved sometimes 
slowly, sometimes with astonishing rapidity ; the author 
would try to bar their progress sometimes with chairs, but 
they would make detours in continuing their course in the 
same direction. On one occasion he saw a little round 
table, on which the spirits had been accustomed to write in 
his presence, transported through the air from one end of a 
chamber to the other. . . . 

"Nevertheless, though the effects of the influence of 
freed spirits may correspond with those of spirits incarnate, 
it must be confessed that their means must differ from ours, 
in being no longer fettered by material impediments. It is 
probable that the action and influence of spirits offer some 
analogy with the phenomenon of creation ; spirits being 
finite images of God, who is the Absolute Spirit par excel- 
lence. Surely, in a state of existence where time is merged 
in eternity, and space is comprised in infinity, there cannot 
be a question of means and appliances to produce any 
material effect whatever, such as direct writing, &c. The 
creative will is alone sufficient in acting on inert matter 
{Mens agitat molem). The spirit of man, after having 
been released from the physical bod}' by death, and after 



54 IMMORTAL LIFE 

having cast off the obstructions of matter, enters into a 
state less imperfect. It is, then, rational to suppose that 
his power over the elements of nature and his knowledge 
of the laws which govern them should be enlarged. 

"It is, however, possible that the spirits who envelop 
themselves often with a subtile substance, an ethereal 
body, according to all the sacred traditions of antiquity 
(which explains the objective reality of apparitions), may 
concentre, by their force of will and by the aid of this 
subtile bod}- , a current of electricity upon any object what- 
ever, such as a sheet of paper ; and then the letters are 
formed on it, just as the light of the sun makes an im- 
pression of objects on the daguerreotype plate. Aud so 
Moses, in reference to the tables of the Decalogue (Exod. 
xxxii. 15, 16), says: 'The tables were written on both 
their sides ; on the one side, and on the other, were they 
written. And the tables were the work of God, and the 
writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.' 
The greater part of my direct writing from spirits would 
seem to be done with the lead-pencil ; in some thirty, blue 
or black ink seems to have been used." 

On the question of the communications being a reflex of 
the mind of the supposed mediums, Guldenstubbe says : 
1 ' My own experience proves amply that the reflex of 
thoughts must pass for nothing in the phenomenon. In 
the first place, generally the spirit whom we desire does not 
present himself for writing ; another comes, on whom we 
have by no means thought, and whose name even is some- 
times unknown to us. As to sympathetic spirits, they 
come hardly ever during these experiences. The spirits 
have often written whole pages, sometimes with a lead- 
pencil, sometimes with ink, when I have been busied with 
other matters. The notion of reflex action contradicts my 
five hundred experiences, for I have generally made no 
attempt to evoke an}' particular spirit." 



AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 55 

He gives the names of twenty eye-witnesses to the phe- 
nomenon of pneumatography ; and sa} r s he could give the 
names of fift}'. "No reasoning," he tells us, "can per- 
suade us that a fact, once thoroughly proved, has not ex- 
isted ; surely, no Christian ought to refuse such a proof, at 
once moral and material, of the immortality of the soul, as 
is given us in direct spirit-writing. The marvellous facts 
I have adduced are analogous with the phenomena upon 
which all the positive religions, all the sacred traditions, 
and all the mythologies of all nations, are based.* 

"My conclusions are in accord with the beliefs of six- 
teen centuries. It is only the 18th and the 19th that have 
professed ideas diametrically opposed to Spiritualism. . . . 
I hold that I have laid the first foundations of a positive 
science of Spiritualism, based upon irrefutable facts. . . . 
CjSurely a day will come when humanhYv will turn with a 
compassionate disdain from those materialistic plrysicists, 
who believe themselves to be the sole depositaries of the 
laws of nature, of which they only know the material 
appearances. 

'{Unhappily the demonphobia of priests and pastors on 
'one side, and the materialism, skepticism, rationalism, and 
excessive study of the sciences claimed as exact, on the 
other side, have almost deracinated the germ of the reli- 
gious sense in the heart of manj Truly there is but one 
direct phenomenon, at once intelligent and material, inde- 
pendent of the will and the imagination, such as the direct 
writing of spirits, whom one had neither evoked nor in- 
voked, which can serve as a proof undeniable of a super- 
sensuous world." 

With great stores of erudition at his command, Gulden- 
stubbe shows how almost all the great philosophers of 

* For a confirmation of this statement, so far as it relates to the Hebrew and 
Christian religions, see Dr. Eugene CrowelPs " Primitive Christianity and Mod- 
ern Spiritualism," (Carleton, New York, 1874.) 



56 IMMORTAL LIFE 

ancient times were Spiritualists. Even Aristotle tells us 
that invisible beings are as substantial as the visible ; that 
the former have bodies, though these nmy be very subtile 
and ethereal ; and it is a fact, recognized by the most ad- 
vanced modern scholars, that the greatest minds of Greece 
admitted the objective reality of apparitions and phan- 
toms ; and that they further believed that spirits and preter- 
natural beings could communicate with mortals. "The 
approaching triumph of Spiritualism," he says, "ought to 
fill with jo} 7 the hearts of all religious persons ; and yet, is 
it so? On the contrary, our professedly orthodox Chris- 
tians, blinded by their demonphobia, regret this prospective 
defeat of materialism, the deadly adversary of all re- 
ligions." 

I have translated freely from Guldenstubbe's book, be- 
cause his testimony is that of a scholar, a philosopher, a 
man of great purity and integrity of character, and one 
who at the same time got his proofs of psycho-physical 
phenomena independently, without any medial aid what- 
ever, unless we insist that he himself must have been a 
sensitive. We have abundant proof, too, that these phe- 
nomena were not subjective, confined to his own inner expe- 
rience, but were such as could be proved to any witness 
of sound body and mind. 

His unique testimony, strengthened as it is by the depo- 
sitions of honorable witnesses, is therefore of high value 
as corroborating those still sufficient proofs which we get 
through mediums whose necessities compel them to receive 
money for the exhibition of supersensual power, and who 
are mostly inferior to him in moral and mental culture. 
Moreover, his full belief in the non-medial character of the 
phenomena in his presence enhances their importance. If 
a medium, he was an unconscious one. He was wholly dis- 
interested in his efforts to spread the truth. He does not 
seem to have been subject to trances or to states when his 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 57 

own watchful and healthy consciousness was impaired or 
invaded. We hear of no peculiar sensations, no twitch- 
ings or contortions as the accompaniment of his manifesta- 
tions. He rightly claimed that he was entitled to the 
respectful attention of all genuine truth-seekers and men 
of science. 

The fact that such a man got the remarkable phenom- 
enon of direct writing, under such conditions, and proved 
it conclusively to the satisfaction of fifty investigators, 
ought to carry peculiar weight ; for it will be seen from 
the internal evidence of his own writings that he was a 
sincere, enlightened thinker, a philosopher, and an earnest 
seeker after the highest truth that can interest a human 
being ; and as hje was far above the need of taking pay for 
any of his exhibitions, or of seeking any material advan- 
tage therefrom, we must regard him as a witness whose 
words are exempt from any questionable adulteration 
whatever. 

In his last pamphlet (1879) I. H. Fichte remarks that 
notwithstanding his own age and his exemption from the 
controversies of the clay, he feels it his duty to bear testi- 
mony to the great fact of Spiritualism, and he thinks it the 
duty of every man, " with equally earnest convictions," to 
do the same; that Spiritualism is "the ratification of the 
belief in the immortality of the soul by means of the evi- 
dences of psychical experience." He refers to the Slade 
phenomena as having been " observed under conditions 
that preclude all imposture or prestidigitation," and as 
" being decisive for the cause of Spiritualism in Ger- 
many." He tells us "there is no retreat from what has 
been gained, and that the advance of the great fact is 
fully secured." * 

* In his work Eealite des Esprits, Guldenstubbe speaks of "the tendency to 
naturalize the objective miracles of the Bible, and to sacrifice them to the pre- 
tended miracles, moral and subjective, of the regeneration of humanity according 



58 IMMORTAL LIFE 

Fichte anticipates the greatest possible benefit to the 
cause of morality and religion from a knowledge of immor- 
tality, and writes : "The proof that the future state is a 
continuation of the present, and to be affected by all earthly 
experiences, and by our fundamental sentiments and affec- 
tions while here, whether pleasant or grievous, empowers 
us to meet the moral obligations of life, entirely abstracted 
from considerations of future reward or punishment. Here, 
in the earth-life, we have it in our power to seize and shape 
our future destination. Certainly is this a serious revela- 
tion at a time when mankind has long since been accus- 
tomed to displace their care for the future from their daily 
routine, as a consideration not affecting their interests." 

These are strong words from the venerable German sage, 
just as he was about to take leave of the present stage of 
being ; words that will not be unfruitful in influencing the 
developments of future belief. 

The late Sergeant E. W. Cox, a respected London lawyer 
and judge (1809-1879), President of the British Psycho- 
logical Society, but who was not till a very short time 
before his sudden death a Spiritualist in the full sense, got 
satisfactoiy proofs of independent writing through Henry 
Slade, and wrote of it, August 8th, 1876 : "I can only say 
that I was in the full possession of my senses ; that I was 
wide awake ; that it was in broad daylight ; that Dr. Slade 
was under my observation the whole time, and could not 
have moved hand or foot without being detected by me." 

Dr. H. B. Storer, of Boston, Mass., writes, October, 
1877, in a published letter, that his own experience with 
Watkins was ' ' in perfect agreement with the phenomenal 
and spiritual character of the manifestations," described as 
experienced by myself. 

to the limited ideas of I. H. Fichte." That Fichte should have been converted 
to a knowledge of super-sensual phenomena by the man who had thus assailed 
his earlier philosophy, is creditable to his candor, as well as to the character of 
those proofs by which Guldenstubbe wrought his conversion. 



AN INFERENCE OP SCIENCE. 59 

Dr. A. S. Hay ward, of Boston, writes, October 31, 1877 : 

"While at Lake Pleasant camp-meeting, I introduced Mr. 
Watkins to Dr. Cottrell of Kansas. Mr. W. asked Dr. C. 
if he was a Spiritualist. The reply was : ' I am an investi- 
gator.' He then went to the tent of Mr. Watkins, and a 
sitting was had with highly satisfactory results. Two slates 
were placed together, with a small bit of pencil between 
them, and were held firmly by Dr. C. Soon the pencil was 
heard writing, and on opening, the following message was 
found : ' M} T dear husband, you may try to deceive the 
medium, but you cannot deceive } T our wife. You are a 
good Spiritualist.' Dr. C. was one of the oldest Spiritual- 
ists in the country, and his remark was merely intended to 
keep the medium in ignorance of facts that might color any 
communication received." 

Mr. Joseph Beals, of Greenfield, Mass., testifies as 
follows : 

"Last year (1877) I procured two slates, washed them 
off clean, placed a small bit of pencil between them, then 
put screws through the two frames, one on each side, and 
screwed them tightly together. This was done in my office. 
I then took them down to the American House, where Mr. 
Watkins was stopping, and we sat down, on opposite sides, 
at a table, and held the slates between us, he holding one 
end and I the other. Soon we heard writing. W^hen it 
was through I turned the screws back and found three 
names written — my father's, my brother's, and Mrs. A. W. 
Slade's ; and these words : ' We are all here.' " 

Mr. John Wetherbee, of Boston, a friend and neighbor of 
mine, took two new slates, and before he left the shop where 
he bought them, bored holes in the frames, put between 
them a bit of slate-pencil, tied them firmly together with 
twine, and sealed the knots. He then took the tied slates 
to Watkins, and kept charge of them, never permitting 
them to go out of his sight. The room was as light as a 
clear afternoon sun could make it. The slates were clean, 
and the medium never touched or saw the inside of them. 



60 IMMORTAL LIFE 

Yet under these conditions Mr. Wetherbee got a written, 
consistent message, with the name of a departed relative 
attached. In his published account (1877) he says : 

" I know, as well as I know that the sun has shone to- 
day, first, that the slates were new and clean ; secondly, 
that no one in the room or out of the room (the only occu- 
pants being the medium and myself) wrote the communi- 
cation on the slate ; and, thirdly, that it must have been 
done by an invisible, intelligent being or beings, and could 
not have been done in any other conceivable way. I make 
this statement as strongly as I know how, and my oath 
shall be attached if needed." 

■ Mr. Wetherbee reiterates all this (June 5, 1880), and 
writes : " I know I was awake and sound in my mind, and 
no visible being was doing the work that was then going on 
in the space between the two slates under my hands." 

Mr. Joseph Beals, whose personal testimony I have 
already quoted, relates that Mr. T. T. Timayenis, a modern 
Greek b} T birth, a teacher of the Greek language in the 
Collegiate Institute, Springfield, Mass., told him that he 
" obtained from Watkins, in original characters of Romaic, 
the name of his grandfather, and three lines of Greek words, 
correctly spelled, and with accents and breathings correctly 
placed." He also stated that his " grandfather's name was 
very peculiar, and almost unpronounceable by English lips. 
The slate was in full view all the time, and Watkins merely 
touched one corner of it with his fingers." 

Wishing to confirm this account, I requested my friend 
and correspondent, Mrs. Louisa Andrews of Springfield, 
Mass., to call on Mr. Tima3 T enis (1878), and get him to 
verify it, which he did most explicitly. He was not a 
Spiritualist, but he declared that the phenomenon was 
wholly inexplicable. Any one who has seen the somewhat 
illiterate letters written by Watkins (I have several of them) 
will deride the idea that he had so qualified himself in Greek 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 61 

as to be prepared for an accidental and wholly unexpected 
meeting with Mr. Timayenis. Judging the experiment by 
the principles of human science, the Greek message, under 
the conditions, must have been written by an intelligence 
and a power outside of the medium's own physical organism. 

The testimony of my brother, James Otis Sargent, will 
be found in the volume entitled " Psychography," published 
in London in 1878. The sitting took place September 19, 
1877. The witness says: .... "The slates were now 
cleaned again, the bit of pencil was placed between them, 
and I held them at arm's length, Watkins not touching 
them or me. On opening them I found a short communi- 
cation, signed with another of the names I had written. 
.... Here the seance ended. It took place in broad day- 
light. I watched every movement of the medium, and there 
was no possibility of fraud." On this occasion Watkins 
read the names, &c. on five paper pellets, which had been 
written on and folded while he was out of the room — doing 
this while my brother held the pellets, one by one, tightly 
grasped in his hand. 

There was a communication in the Banner of Light of 
June 19, 1880, from a person known to the editor, the 
substance of which may be thus related : — A. B., who had 
never been in Boston before, had never seen Watkins, nor 
had Watkins seen him, went to the medium's rooms, 2 
Lovering Place, Boston, early in June, and asked for a 
sitting. Watkins went out of the room, and A. B. wrote 
six questions on little slips of paper belonging to himself 
which he rolled into small ballots as tightly as possible, and 
placed on the table. Among them he placed a ballot on 
which was a question written by an absent friend — both 
the question and the answer to it being unknown to A. B. 
This ballot A. B. had marked. 

Watkins comes in, does not once touch the ballots, but 
tells A. B. to mix them up, and then point to them slowly. 



62 IMMORTAL LIFE 

This lie did ; and at the touch of the fourth ballot, which 
was the marked one, Watkins tells him to take it up, which 
A. B. does, closing his hand so that the medium shall not 
see the ballot. Watkins walks about the room, looking 
ver}^ flushed and excited, and at last cries out "Pin-cushion." 
A note is made of this by A. B., and there is a long pause, 
Then Watkins, looking dazed and confused, says, "They 
speak of a Katharine." This was the name of A. B.'s 
friend who had written the question. Another long pause, 
and then, with a pleased, bright expression, Watkins ex- 
claims, "Yes, I remember now; it was something I made 
for you." tlere he stopped, seemed to be trying to grasp 
some impression, and at last said, "It was something to 
go round the neck ; I don't know what you call it — a tie 
or something." 

A. B. did not open the ballot, but told him that he could 
not say whether this was correct or not, but would let him 
know. When A. B. saw his friend he found that the ques- 
tion was, " Where is the pin-cushion j t ou made me at Otter 
River, and what else did 3^011 make me ? " The answer to 
the second part of this question was what the medium had 
given, " Necktie." 

The remarkable points in this experiment are these : The 
ballot, untouched by the medium, contained a question ad- 
dressed by an absent friend of A. B. to some departed 
acquaintance, and both the question and the answer to it 
were unknown to A. B. Let us set aside as not pertinent 
to our present inquiry the remarkable clairvoyant power 
manifested hy Watkins, of being able to read the inscrip- 
tion on a tightly rolled-up ballot, (which he had never 
touched, and which was not written on in his presence,) so 
that he could give the leading word on it, " Pin-cushion." 
But by what conceivable power did he get at the second 
part of the answer, where the word was not written on the 
ballot, and where it was not in the mind of A. B., who was 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 63 

not the person to whom his friend's question seems to have 
been addressed? 

Here is the puzzle. If there was mind-reading, then 
some transcendent power in Watkins must have gone a 
journey of miles to the Katharine who wrote the question, 
and got out of her mind the word " tie," or " necktie," or 
"something to go round the neck." This is one way of 
solving the mystery. Another solution is, that the deceased 
individual, to whom the question was addressed, was, in 
her capacity of spirit, enabled to impress corresponding 
spiritual faculties in Watkins with the needed words, until 
his normal consciousness could grasp them and prompt their 
utterance. Which is the easier solution of the two ? Or are 
they not both equally insoluble ? 

While at Lake Pleasant, Mass. (August 25th, 1877), 
Watkins submitted his mediumship to a crucial testing on 
the public platform. Two new slates were bought by Mr. 
Joseph Beals. A committee of three, two of them not 
believers, were chosen by the audience for the test. They 
were Eben Ripley, Daniel D. Wiley, and F. L. Sargent. 
These gentlemen, after making a careful examination of 
the slates brought by Mr. Beals, between which a bit of 
slate-pencil was placed, held them b}^ one end, while Watkins 
held them by the other. It was broad daylight. Soon the 
scratch of a pencil was heard, and on taking off the top 
slate the committee found that a message of forty-seven 
words had been written on the lower surface. They united 
in declaring that they could see no possible chance for any 
deception in the manifestation ; that there was no possi- 
bility of a substitution of slates, or of chemical writing. 
At Mr. Beals's request they all wrote their names on the 
slate, and he had it (1879) in his keeping. The communi- 
cation got is as follows : ' ' My dear friends : As we approach 
the natural from our spiritual homes, we find our old love 
for our friends is still strong within us, for father, mother, 



64 IMMORTAL LIFE 

brother, sister. God and the angel-world bless all, is the 
wish of this control. Mrs. A. W. Slade." 

Mr. 'Giles B. Stebbins, of Detroit, a man every way 
estimable, vigilant, and judicial in his investigations, got a 
remarkable communication through independent writing in 
Chicago, December, 1878, — Mrs. Simpson, a French woman 
from New Orleans, imperfectly acquainted with the English 
language, being the medium. She had met Mr. Stebbins 
only the night before, and knew nothing of him or his 
family ; yet there came to him this message, signed with 
the name of his departed uncle, Calvin Stebbins, of Wil- 
braham, Mass. : "I find no hell or baby's skulls, as we 
used to talk of. I find over here common sense and justice. 
Each man makes his own destiny. God has not destined 
any one to heaven or hell. Ah ! Giles, the abyss is bridged, 
and we are fortifj'ing the arches under the bridge daily, 
daily." 

All this was far above the capacity of the medium, and 
so characteristic that it is impossible for Mr. Stebbins to be- 
lieve that it could have come from her unassisted mind. 
He got writing while he himself held the slate under the 
table, the medium merely touching the end which projected 
out, so that her hand was in full sight. 

The only way to evade the overwhelming testimony to 
the great fact of pneumatography is to deny it flatly, and 
to maintain, as some scientific specialists do, that no amount 
of human testimony can establish an occurrence so extraor- 
dinary. This is the position held by Messrs. Carpenter, 
Lankester, Beard, Hammond, Youmans, and others, claim- 
ing to be men of science. Dismissing such a fact as im- 
possible in the nature of things, they would stamp it out as 
no proper subject for investigation, but only one for wrath- 
ful and contemptuous rejection by all men of science. 

' ' We are not bound to examine into facts so diametri- 
cally opposed to our notions of the possible in nature," is 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 65 

the argument by which they would discredit the attested 
phenomenon before they have taken the trouble to enter 
upon a patient, practical study of its reality. "Human 
testimony is worth nothing in such a case," says Dr. George 
M. Beard. "We must not believe our senses in such a 
case," says Dr. W. B. Carpenter. 

It is not the wary man of science who mocks and scolds 
at any well-attested phenomenon. He may be a scientific 
expert in some one or two departments ; but he knows that 
this does not qualify him to assume dictatorship in regard 
to facts of which he has had little or no experience, and 
which perhaps his prejudices forbid him to examine. Be- 
cause the false may be mixed up with the true, the absurd 
with the genuine, the bad with the good, — the unpleasant 
fact does not justify the philosopher in spurning the whole 
as valueless. "To abandon these spiritual phenomena to 
credulity," saj's Victor Hugo, "is to commit a treason 
against human reason. Nevertheless we see them always 
rejected, and always reappearing. They date not their 
advent from yesterday." 

In regard to the phenomenon of independent writing, we 
could accumulate testimony till it should fill volumes as 
capacious as the British Cyclopaedia ; but those who do not 
find reasons in what we have adduced for considering the 
subject as at least worthy of being investigated before it is 
condemned, would not be moved from their position by any 
amount of testimony, however conclusive. 

In a little volume entitled " Psychography, by M. A. 
Oxon," published in London in 1878, and for sale in Bos- 
ton and Chicago, the sincere inquirer will find an excellent 
summary of evidence establishing the phenomenon. Not 
the least valuable is that of Samuel Bellachini, the court 
conjurer at Berlin, given in the form of an affidavit before 
Gustav Haagen, a public notaiy, December 6, 1877, and en- 
tered in his register under the number 482 . In this document 
5 



66 IMMORTAL LIFE 

Bellachini declares that the phenomenal occurrences in 
Slade's presence have been thoroughly examined by him 
" with the minutest observation and investigation of the 
surroundings, including the table." He says: "I have 
not, in the smallest instance, found anything to be pro- 
duced by means of prestidigitative manifestations, or by 
mechanical apparatus ; " and he declares that k ' any expla- 
nation of the experiments which took place, under the cir- 
cumstances and conditions then obtaining, by any reference 
to prestidigitation, to be absolutely impossible." 

Now if there is any man who can be called an ' ' expert " 
in the matter of detecting fraud in an experiment made in 
broadest daylight, involving the question of direct writing, 
independent of any human delusion or trick, it must be the 
experienced juggler. It is difficult to see how a specialist 
in any of the exact sciences is better qualified to judge of 
the genuineness of the phenomenon than any man of good 
common sense, in the full possession of all his faculties, 
vigilant and calm. A chemist, it is true, might find out 
whether any chemical preparation had been used on the 
slate ; but the possibility of such a trick is ruled out when 
we use (as I have repeatedly done) our own slates, fastened 
together while the inner surfaces cannot be touched by the 
medium, and the slates are never for a moment out of the 
sight of the witness. 

One can hardly realize, until he sees it, the conclusive- 
ness of the manifestation as a proof of direct writing by 
some psychical or spiritual power, apart from any visible 
organism, exercising intelligent force. What escape is 
there from the conclusion? We must either assume that 
there is an undiscovered force emitted by the human or- 
ganism, and performing intelligent acts independently of 
the normal consciousness, or we are thrown back upon the 
hypothesis of independent spirit action. 

Dr. George Wyld, of London, in his " Theosophy and 



AN INFERENCE OF SCIENCE. 67 

the Higher Life" (Triibner & Co., 1880), remarks : "With 
regard to slate-writing, there is no order of spiritual phe- 
nomena which impresses me more powerfully. Slade and 
his slate-writing were to me objects of absorbing interest. 
All was done in the light and above-board. The evidence 
that the writing was produced by a spiritual intelligence, 
without the intervention of human hands, was overwhelm- 
ing ; and in his presence the materialism of three thou- 
sand years was refuted in five minutes. When, therefore, 
brutal and intolerant ignorance seized Slade, and dragged 
him into a police court, I felt prepared to run any risk, and 
incur any responsibility in his defence." 

Dr. Wyld is of opinion that the "psychic force "pro- 
ducing the phenomena can be exercised bj 7 some human 
beings in the body, but that much more easily and fre- 
quently the souls of departed human beings can exercise 
the same force. He held the theory at one time that the 
unconscious spirit of the medium may often produce the 
direct writing ; but in relation to this question he finally 
sa} r s : "I have come much more round to the theory that 
most of the mediumistic phenomena are produced by for- 
eign spirits." This is generally the conclusion of those 
who have had the largest and longest experience in study- 
ing and testing the phenomena. 

It is a sign of the advancing intelligence of the times 
that Dr. Wyld is able to say (1880) in regard to his un- 
popular investigations: "For one friend I have lost, I 
have gained twenty better friends, and even my worldly 
prosperity has been greatly thereby increased." 



68 FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 



CHAPTER II. 

A SCIENTIFIC BASIS. FURTHER TESTIMONY. SPIRITUAL 

PROOFS. THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY CONTRADICTED BY 

FACTS. 

The theory of the Materialist is, that the aggregation of 
certain material molecules, developing into an organism, is 
sufficient to explain the phenomena of life and mind ; that 
there is no more of mystery in the evolution of the phe- 
nomenon man from a few particles of matter hardly visible 
with the aid of a microscope, and undistinguishable from 
the little glutinous speck that grows into a nettle or a tad- 
pole, — than there is in the evolution of an oak-tree from 
an acorn. And this last half of the assertion may be true. 

Tyndall, who is not in the habit of giving comfort to 
Spiritualists, has the candor to admit that the gap between 
molecules and the phenomena of mind is not bridged by 
any theory of materialism. . While he believes that " mat- 
ter contains within itself the promise and potency of all 
terrestrial life," he prudently adds, " How it came to have 
this power, is a question on which I never ventured an 
opinion." 

Thus he would seem to favor the ancient doctrine of the 
Hylozoists, that life and matter are inseparable : a doctrine 
that has been held in various forms. It crops out in " the 
ultimate particles, material and having life," of Straton of 
Lampsacus ; in the theories of the followers of Plotinus ; 
in the assertion of Spinoza that all things are alive in dif- 






SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 69 

ferent degrees ; in the monadology of Leibnitz ; and in the 
theory of divine influx of Swedenborg. So we find Tyn- 
dall in good company ; and he must not be classed with 
Huxley, who, while he admits that his organism has " cer- 
tain mental functions," believes they are "dependent on 
its molecular composition, and come to an end " when he 
dies. 

That an intelligence, whether originating in this sphere 
of being or coming from some other, can exist and mani- 
fest life independently of a brain and nervous system, is 
what materialism, claiming to represent the most advanced 
science of the da}', repudiates as an impossibility. But 
Spiritualism, as I have shown, gives direct evidence that 
intelligence can clearly manifest itself independently of any 
visible organism. In the words of the Rev. H. R. Haweis 
of England : "It offers to produce intelligence of some 
kind acting upon matter, and 3'et unconnected with a brain 
and nervous system. If this could be proved, the mate- 
rialist argument would at once fall ; for if intelligence sim- 
ilar to ours exists, and can operate outside the usual or- 
ganized conditions, our souls may — we do not say must — 
do the same : — God is conceivable, and intelligence ceases 
to be the mere product of blind force and matter specially 
organized." 

The facts I have verified by my experience have satisfied 
me that it has been proved that an intelligence operating at 
a distance of twenty-two feet from any known medium, 
and of more than fifteen feet from an}' other human being, 
may produce a written message on a slate. The theory 
that there are latent powers in the human subject that, un- 
consciously to him, can accomplish such an effect, involves 
the theory that there are powers independent of material 
organs, and which are not dependent on a visible material 
body for their potential activity. So that which-ever theory 
may prevail, the cause of Spiritualism is secure. 



70 FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 

In the Times of Chicago, Jul}', 1880, there is a graphic 
account of his experiences by Professor V. B. Denslow, not 
a Spiritualist, but who had four sittings in that city with 
Henry Slade, and one or two with Mrs. Simpson. From it 
I quote the following passages : 

" I next sat with Mr. Slade at his own rooms. We en- 
tered the back parlor, no other person being in the room, 
and the doors were closed. I examined the carpet, table, 
and wall, all of which were ordinary and honest. I did not 
search Slade's pockets, nor, as the letter in the New York 
Nation recommended, did I look for concealed magnets 
thrust under his skin. The sequel will show that such pre- 
cautions on my part would have been as futile as a means 
of discovering the mode in which the slate-writing was 
done, as the thrusting of ' magnets ' into or under one's 
skin would be as a means of writing between two slates. 
Nor is it material whether there was one slate or fifty slates 
in the room, as, in the mode in which the writing was done, 
the theory of substitution of slates cuts no figure. But 
according to my best observation the room contained but 
two slates at the time, both of which lay on the table, and 
both of which I examined on both sides at the outset, and 
they contained no writing. Nor were there anj- springs 
about the slates by which, as suggested by one imaginative 
1 spirit exposer ' in California, a roll of muslin indistin- 
guishable from the surface of the slate was unfurled and 
spread over the slate. All such complicated and imprac- 
ticable devices only bring out into strong contrast the 
simplicity yet certainty of the occult power which was now 
to perform the writing." 

Professor Denslow got the slate-writing in a way which 
he fully describes, and which satisfied him as a proof that 
slate-writing could be done in Slade's presence " without 
any contact between any living person and the pencil that 
wrote." He says : 

"I have read, with a sincere desire to get some light 
from it, Mr. Ho wells' careful analysis in ' The Undiscovered 
Country,' of the various stages of lunacy which induced his 
4 Dr. Boynton ' to look for spirit manifestations where they 



SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 71 

were not to be found, but I do not see that they shed any 
light whatever on a case where slate-writing is clearly done 
without the possibility of physical contact between any 
living person and the pencil. I have also read Dr. George 
M. Beard's efforts to connect the word 'hysteria' with 
these singular phenomena, but I fail to see wherein they 
apply to such a case. My health was never so good, and 
my mind never more calm, than when observing these 
phenomena. I am as free from hysteria as Dr. Beard, and 
from lunacy as Mr. Ho wells, and so in like manner were 
each and all of the twenty ladies and gentlemen who at 
various times have witnessed these phenomena in nry pres- 
ence, or have described to me their nature immediately 
afterward. So far, I have seen as much intelligence, as 
much skepticism, as much calm, healthy acumen, "learning, 
and culture, as much familiarity with scientific methods and 
with sleight-of-hand, as the' most querulous could wish, or 
as either Beard or Howells possesses, brought to bear on 
the simple problem, which it would seem a child ought to 
be able to solve, of detecting whether an} 7 human being was 
in physical contact with the pencil when it wrote. They 

all say no such contact was possible 

k ' Independent slate-writing has never been a character- 
istic of hysterics. Hysterical persons may believe they see 
what they do not see, but the principle of illusion has no 
application in this case, as fifty persons in the room at the 
time would all have seen the writing alike when it had been 
done, and all would have heard the pencil doing it. I did 
not see the pencil make its mark, and therefore there is no 
fact in the entire phenomena to which the principle of illu- 
sion can apply. The use of the word hysteria, therefore, 
where no illusion of the senses is alleged, is merely the 
impudence of ignorance. It explains nothing, and desig- 
nates nothing. When I examined the slates before the 
writing, no illusion theory applies, because nothing had yet 
occurred. When I examined them after the writing was 
over, no illusion theory applies, since the writing was 
undoubtedly there, and an} 7 one of a million persons, if 
they saw the slate at all, would have seen and read it alike. 
The only part of the fact in relation to which the illusion 
theory can apply is, that I suppose I held the slate-surface, 
where physical contact with the pencil on the part of some 
human writer would be impossible, when, in reality, I did 



72 FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 

* 
not. But what is so easy as to hold a slate in broad day- 
light, where no human being can write on it, especially in 
a room where there is only one other person. To suppose 
that I cannot do that, or that I cannot know decisively 
when I do or do not so hold it, is part of the sheer insanity 
of impudence. It indicates that those who so assert have 
become infidels to the integrity of the human intellect, and 
have lost their power to remain lo} T al to the evidences of 
the senses, — an assertion which involves no less than an 
absolute abdication of the throne of human reason. 

" Nor does the theory of sleight-of-hand apply, because 
in all cases of sleight-of-hand the hand of the operator is in 
communication with the thing done, and a chief share of 
the difficulty is created by keeping this magical hand in 
such a state of swift and diversified motion that the observer 
could not follow it. In this case, however, both of Slade's 
hands were motionless, plainly in sight. A sleight-of-hand 
man who never uses his hands, but whose hands lie flat on 
a table while everything is doing, would, indeed, be a 
wonder, unless he had an assistant, and Slade had none. 

" What I had thus far seen with Slade did not differ es- 
sentially from what I had already seen with Mrs. Simpson 
who resides permanently in this city, except that Mrs. 
Simpson reads easily any question her visitor may write on 
the slate, without having that visual access to the slate 
which would be necessary to enable an ordinary person to 
read it. This, Slade tells me, he does not. 

"In another respect, Mrs. Simpson's slate-writing is 
characterized by an incident that does not appear in Slade's. 
This is the fact that the bit of pencil is placed on a slate, 
and a goblet filled with water is placed over it, so that 
apparently the pencil should be confined in its writing 
within the hollow space left by the concave bottom of the 
goblet, which space would be about the size of a silver 
dollar. But on placing the slate underneath the table, Mrs. 
Simpson holding one side of the slate and the observer the 
other, so that the top of the goblet rests steadily and firmly 
against the under side of the table, the pencil is heard to 
write in long lines across the slate, as freely as if the goblet 
were not there, and on removing slate and goblet from under 
the table, without the possibility that either could have 
changed its relative position during the operation, or could 
have been removed by so much as a hair's-breadth from 



SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 73 

each other, the writing is found to begin on the slate at a 
point outside the space covered by the goblet, to cross the 
slate again and again in half a dozen lines, none of which 
pay any regard to the physical obstacle afforded by the solid 
contact of the goblet with the slate, so that each line begins 
to the left of where the goblet stands, passes directly under 
it with unbroken writing, and reappears at the right of the 
goblet as if the goblet had not been there. 

" When I saw this with Mrs. Simpson, the conditions pre- 
cluded deceit or sleight-of-hand as absolutely as in the case 
of Slade. But one other person was in the room, and he 
sat some twelve feet away. I had examined the carpets 
for trap-doors, and think I am competent to say there were 
none, and had there been twenty they would have been of 
no service, as I held the goblet and slate so firmly and 
steadily while under the table, that I knew that neither 
table, slate, nor goblet moved relatively to each other while 
the writing was being done. Not only was the writing done 
without possibility of any human person being in contact 
with the pencil while it was doing, but it was done by some 
agency which disregarded solid glass as an obstacle, and 
wrote as easily on a surface covered with it as on a bare 
surface. This, of course, raises the question wlvy it should 
have used the pencil at all ; but I am not answering ques- 
tions, but asking them. Moreover, at the end of the 
writing the bit of pencil was neither in the hollow space in 
which it had been placed underneath the goblet, nor was it 
anywhere on the slate ; but it was at the bottom of the 
water on the inside of the goblet, and was worn by the 
writing it appeared to have done. The physically impos- 
sible fact, therefore, of passing one solid substance directly 
through another, without violence to either, occurred some 
six or eight times within ten minutes. 

"After I had been forty minutes in the room, and knew 
that neither when I entered, nor since, had there been any 
other flowers in the room than a growing fuchsia near the 
door, Mrs. Simpson undertook to produce a flower. Placing 
the goblet of water on the slate, in like manner as was done 
for the slate-writing, but with no pencil, after, perhaps, five 
minutes of apparent strong electro-nervous excitement in 
the arm which was holding her side of the slate, Mrs. Simp- 
son told me to withdraw the goblet from under the table, 



74 FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 

and in the act of doing so, the fragrance of the hyacinth 
filled the room, and inside the goblet was a fresh, rich, 
unstained Iryacinth flower of twenty-two petals, just plucked 
from the stem, and which I took home with me and kept 
till it withered — perhaps a week. 

it Prior to my third session with Slade, I was present at 
the residence of Colonel Bundy, when some sixteen persons 
of indisputable intelligence and some of them of special 
critical power, including Judge Barnum and Mrs. Barnum, 
Dr. Jewell, of Evanston, editor of the best reputed journal 
of nervous diseases in this country and one of the foremost 
medical journals of the world ; Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Starett, 
of The Western Magazine, Mr. and Mrs. Perry, Mr. Gage, 
Mrs. Willard, Dr. and Mrs. Dickson, and several others, 
all witnessed substantially the same method of slate^writing 
I have described, and none of whom were able to detect any 
mode by which an}^ living person could have communicated 
the moving force of the pencil which did the writing. Of 
course, in all these slate-writings there is no concealment, 
no turning down of lights, and the slates are alwa} r s in the 
hands of the observers, and not of Slade." 

After describing with scientific precision some partial 
experiments in materialization with Slade, Professor Dens- 
low remarks : 

" I think I have sufficient acquaintance with the instru- 
mentalities by which spectral and illusory effects are me- 
chanically produced, to say that the use of the means essen- 
tial to the production of these effects were in this case simply 
impossible, and that were they possible, such other effects 
when produced bear virtually no resemblance whatever to 
the effects which I saw." 

In conclusion, he remarks frankly and forcibly : 

"Here are facts which, whatever their nature, whether 
they consist in proofs of stupendous psychological influence 
of one human mind over others, or whether they are a lusus 
natural, derivable from electric influence, or Whether they 
are a window opening from our earthly life into a spirit- 
world, deserve to be candidly stated by all who have seen 
them. Even if they are impositions on the human mind/ it 



SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 75 

is the duty of scientific men to study the laws governing 
the production of such impositions, and to prove the fact 
b} T producing the same phenomena themselves, coupled with 
proof that they do not produce them' by spirit agency; The 
more cautious we are in building theories upon these phe- 
nomena, and the more patient we are in developing the 
phenomena themselves until they evolve their own theories 
irresistibly, the greater will be the value both of our facts 
and theories when obtained. As for theories, it will be 
time enough for me to state mine when I have formed one." 

Guldenstubbe is not too sanguine when he declares that 
the proof by direct Writing is the crowning evidence of the 
existence and activity of a principle assuring us that there 
is not only a spirit in man, using his material organism, 
but a spirit outside of him using some invisible organism or 
instrument for producing effects upon matter. "These 
immaterial beings," you say, " cannot move matter." But 
how do we know that they are in all respects immaterial ? 
Are there not finer forces and finer grades of matter than 
we can distinguish by the unaided bodily senses ? Photog- 
raphy proves the fact even to the materialist. And how 
do we know that what is immaterial to our coarse mortal 
senses, is immaterial to one in whom the spiritual senses 
are developed ? Moreover, when we say that what is imma- 
terial cannot move matter, do we not say what no scientific 
or philosophical analysis has yet been able to prove? 

The Rev. Samuel Watson, of Tennessee, late of the 
Methodist Church, a gentleman sincere and estimable in all 
the relations of life, says : " I have seen the double slate 
held by skeptics, and truthful messages were written on 
both slates when thus confined together." The same writer 
says: "Spirit manifestations constitute the basis upon 
which the whole fabric of Christianity has been built. 
Primitive Christianity, as taught by its founder, and pure 
Spiritualism are identical." 

In confirmation of this, the testimony of the three prin- 



76 FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 

cipal founders of Methodism, John Wesley, Adam Clark, 
and Richard Watson, is adduced. Clark distinctly ex- 
presses his belief that spirits may "have intercourse with 
this world, and become visible to mortals/' 

Eeferring to the case of the reappearance of Samuel, 
(1 Sam. xxviii. 11), Eichard Watson says: "It answers 
all the objections which were ever raised, or can be raised, 
from the philosoplry of the case, against the possibility of 
the appearance of departed spirits." 

That John Wesley was not only a believer, but that he 
was medially sensitive, would seem to be apparent from 
passages in which he relates that on three occasions he saw 
spirits. In every instance their appearance was followed 
by news of the death of each person at the time he appeared. 
Referring to one who died in Jamaica, Wesley remarks in 
afoot-note: " So a spirit finds no difficulty in travelling 
three or four thousand miles in a moment." 

The manifestations in the Wesley famity in England, 
commencing in 1716, resemble in all respects the phenom- 
ena of our own day. They continued with some members 
of the family for over thirty years. Robert Southey, in his 
"Life of Wesley," regards them, as do modern Spiritual- 
ists, as being *' in the ordinary course of nature" ; and he 
says: "An author who, in this age, relates such a story 
and treats it as not utterly incredible and absurd, must 
expect to be ridiculed ; but the testimony upon which it 
rests is far too strong to be set aside because of the 
strangeness of the relation." 

Priestley, who tried to reconcile his effete system of 
materialism with a belief in future rewards and punishments, 
refers to the Wesleyan phenomena as among the most 
striking on record ; though he made an abortive attempt to 
explain them by natural causes ; but they remain as inex- 
plicable as ever b} r any theor}^ outside of the spiritual. 

Oberlin (1740-1826), Protestant pastor in the Ban de la 






SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 77 

Roche, part of the former province of Alsace, labored ear- 
nestly to raise the condition of his people. They were 
nearly all Lutherans and Spiritualists. He tried hard to 
overcome what he regarded as their superstition, and 
preached forcibly against it ; but at last the demonstrable, 
objective facts became too strong for him, and his opposi- 
tion ended by his becoming a Spiritualist himself. The 
dead, he tells us, frequently re-appeared, especially after 
that well-known and terrible accident which buried several 
villages (the fall of the Rossberg in 180G). Soon after- 
wards, as Oberlin expressed it, ;t many had their spiritual 
sight opened," and recognized the apparitions of different 
victims of the disaster. His own deceased wife was often, 
for years, visible to his sight, watching over him, and 
holding communion with him. Oberlin left a "large pile 
of papers" on the subject, under the title of " Journal des 
Apparitions et Instructions par reves " (Journal of Appari- 
tions and Instructions through dreams) . They' were com- 
mitted to M. Matter, who told Robert Dale Owen of the 
fact in. Paris, May, 1859. 

The conditions under which clairvoyance and direct 
writing have been verified, are of such a character that no 
medium's recreancy, or claim to have deceived, can now 
be of the slightest avail in invalidating the evidences. Until 
he can instruct you or me how to do the same things by the 
exercise of our natural powers, he may be set down as in- 
sincere. If a medium, without touching or having touched 
a slate, can cause writing, indicating clairvo} 7 ance, to appear 
on it, as I hold it in my hand, he must either produce the 
writing by his own unconsciously exercised abnormal 
powers, in a way he is impotent to explain, or it must be 
produced by some foreign, unknown, intelligent force. In 
either case it is a force operating outside of any visible 
organism. 

As early as 1848, Dr. E. C. Rogers, a gentleman person- 



78 FACTS AGAINST THEOEIES. 

ally known to me, broached the theoiy that the powers 
manifested in the phenomena lie within the sphere of the 
human organization and of simple mundane agencies. He 
wrote a book enforcing his views. Recently this theory 
has been borrowed by a German writer as applicable to the 
phenomena through Hemy Slade. But the inquiry is per- 
tinently put : If a spiritually-endowed human agent, while 
hampered by his material environment, can perform acts 
independent of material limitations, is it not a fair infer- 
ence that he can do more and better when the same spirit- 
ual powers are released by the dissolution of the physical 
husk ? 

In the majority of these supposed manifestations from 
spirits, it is indeed difficult to arrive at a scientific certainty 
as to the identity of a form-manifestation, whether partial 
or entire ; but, as a correspondent of the London Spirit- 
ualist aptly remarks: " Supposing that all the evidences 
of spirit identity could be swept away, the common phe- 
nomenon of a living hand or head, the duplicate in ap- 
pearance of that of the medium, appearing at one part of 
the room, while the medium is in a dead trance at the 
other, would of itself be extremely suggestive. The ques- 
tion might well arise in the mind of the observer, whether, 
when the dead bod} T of a friend is in the coffin, the living 
counterpart maj T not be somewhere else." 

" I can never forget," writes Dr. George Wyld, of Lon- 
don (1880), "the overwhelming sensations I experienced 
on first seeing and touching these hands — warm, sensitive, 
detached hands — which grasped my hand with the perfect 
reality of human hands, and 3 7 et dissolved from the grasp 
as no human hands could do." 

Pneumatography gives us evidence of an intelligent 
force producing written messages at a distance of more 
than twenty feet from the medium ; and Clairvoyance gives 
us evidence of a supersensual, intelligent facuhy, able to 






SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 79 

read what no human pair of eyes could possibly detect. 
Of these facts I am as certain as of any fact of human 
existence. They are known to hundreds of thousands of 
competent witnesses at the present day. The legitimate 
inference is, that there is a natural and a spiritual organ- 
ism, common to all men, but that the spiritual manifests 
itself only under certain abnormal or exceptional con- 
ditions. 

Having satisfied ourselves of intelligent, ultra-corporeal 
action, independent of mortal muscles, of a palpably 
material brain, or of an} T known physical effort, we may 
rationally conclude that it is not limited to our two great 
typical phenomena, but that its range is co-extensive with 
life itself, and that this life is by no means dependent for 
its continuance on a visibly material organism. Other 
transcendent phenomena lend ample confirmation to this 
view, and prove that the manifestations of life and mind 
are as various as they are inexplicable unless we hypothe- 
cate a force ver} r different from that which our material 
organism can normally supply. From a single bone Cuvier 
could infer the osteology of the animal to which it be- 
longed. So from one thoroughly demonstrated phenom- 
enon of Spiritualism the great fact of an intelligent force, 
independent of a visible organism, may be scientifically 
inferred. 

It is true that the various phenomena have occurred in 
all ages of the world, of which we have any account. But 
since 1848 the}^ seem to have been epidemic rather than 
sporadic. In that 3-ear the raps occurred in the Fox fam- 
ily at Hrdesville, N. Y., and Kate Fox, then a mere child, 
discovered by questioning them that they betrayed intelli- 
gence. From that time the modern phenomena have mul- 
tiplied and increased in importance : — 

With many mediums there were raps and knocks, an- 
swering questions and spelling out messages ; in other 



80 FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 

cases, tables rising up on two legs, pounded on the floor 
their revelations. Dials, with movable hands, were used, 
which pointed out letters and answered questions without 
apparent human aid. The hands of mediums, acting con- 
vulsively, and, as they averred, without volition, wrote 
things beyond their knowledge. In these writings, pro- 
duced often with incredible speed, the chirography was 
sometimes reversed, so that to read them one had to read 
the reflection in a mirror. They were done under circum- 
stances that clearly proved abnormal action. Some me- 
diums would write different messages with both hands at a 
time, and without any consciousness of what they were 
writing. There were speaking mediums who declared 
themselves to be merely passive instruments of the spirits. 
Some would represent with amazing fidelity the actions, 
voices, and appearance of persons long deceased, and 
whom they had never seen. There were drawing mediums, 
who, blindfolded, drew accurate portraits of the departed, 
and this with incredible celerit}^. Sometimes stigmata 
would appear in raised red lines upon the skin of the me- 
dium, indicating too the power of clairvoyance. Pon- 
derous bodies, as heavy dining-tables and piano-fortes, 
would be raised from the floor. Writings and pictures 
were produced without visible hands. Luminous ap- 
pearances were frequent. Persons were touched by in- 
visible and sometimes visible hands. Various musical 
instruments were played on without visible agency. In 
my own library I have had a large bass-viol skilfully 
played on 03- some unknown force in the dark, when the 
medium's hands were held, and there was no possibility of 
collusion or deception. Voices were often heard that did 
not proceed from the medium. Persons were lifted to the 
ceiling under circumstances that left no doubt as to the 
reality of the mysterious levitation. Phantom faces, as 
well as full-form manifestations, would be produced when 
fraud or hallucination was out of the question. 

All the most important of these phenomena I have my- 
self witnessed under conditions, which, if not sufficiently 
rigorous to induce me to place them by the side of the 
pneumatographic and clairvoyant phenomena as established 






SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 81 

facts of science, were yet sufficient to cause me to accept 
them in my own estimation as equally proved. 

Let him who would undervalue the immense significance 
of our phenomena ask himself why it is, then, that they 
are denounced so arrogantly and repudiated so angrily by 
a large majority of the leading physicists and materialists 
of the day. Why is it, except that they see that if our 
facts are accepted as true, they must work the utter over- 
throw of all Sadducean and materialistic systems. 

In his report of the phenomena through Slade, Zollner, 
the eminent German professor of physical astronomy, tes- 
tifies as follows : 

"On the evening of November 16, 1877, I placed in a 
room which Slade had never entered, a card-table and four 
chairs. After Professor Fechner, Professor Braune, Slade, 
and I had taken our places, and laid our hands upon the 
table, a knocking in the table was heard. Writing was 
given in the usual way upon a slate bought by myself two 
hours before, and which I had also marked. . . . The 
book-slate, after being first cleaned, and a crumb of pencil 
laid between, was then closed and held by Slade over the 
head of Professor Braune. The noise of writing was soon 
heard, and when the slate was opened, a long message was 
found upon it. Whilst this was going on, suddenly a bed 
behind a screen began to move, and came about two feet 
away from the wall, shoving the screen with it. Slade was 
more than four feet from the bed, had his back turned to 
it, and his legs crossed." 

Here is Zollner's account of an experiment in which 
matter was made to disappear and reappear : 

"At about half-past eleven o'clock, in bright sunlight, I 
became, wholly without expectation or preparation, a wit- 
ness of a very extraordinary phenomenon. I had, as usual, 
taken my place with Slade at a card-table. Opposite me, 
and near the card-table, stood a small round stand. Some- 
thing like a minute may have passed after Slade and I had 
seated ourselves and placed our hands, one above the other, 
together, when the round stand began slowly to sway to 
6 



82 FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 

and fro. We both saw it clearly. The motions were soon 
more extensive, and, meanwhile, the whole stand drew near 
to the card-table, and placed itself under the latter, with its 
three feet turned toward me. I, and as it seemed also Mr. 
Slade, did not know in what way the phenomena were to 
be further developed. For perhaps a minute nothing at all 
happened. Slade was about to use his slate and peucil to 
ask the spirits whether we were to expect anything, when 
I resolved to take a nearer view of the round stand which 
was lying, as I thought, under the card-table. To my 
greatest amazement, and Blade's also, we found the space 
under the card-table perfectly empty. Nowhere in the rest 
of the chamber could we find the stand which a minute 
previously had been before our eyes. After five or six 
minutes spent in breathless waiting for the reappearance of 
the stand, Slade claimed that he saw appearances of lights 
of which I, as usual, could see nothing. Looking with 
more and more anxiety and astonishment in different direc- 
tions in the air above me, Slade asked me if I did not see 
the appearance of large lights, and while I answered the 
question with a decided negative, I turned my head in the 
direction of the ceiling of the chamber, and suddenly saw, 
at a height of about five feet, the lost table, with the legs 
directed upward into the air, float downward rapidly upon 
the top of the card-table." (Zollner, vol. ii., part 2, p. 917.) 

The following is the Rev. Joseph Cook's account of one 
of the experiments with Slade, at which Zollner and other 
German professors were present : 

"A professor of Leipzig University buys a book-slate 
himself, and ties it up, or locks it, or screws it together, 
first having cleansed it and carefully removed any chemical 
preparation on it. He does not allow it to go out of his 
hands during the experiment. It is watched by men of 
trained habits of observation, while writing appears on its 
interior surface. An elaborate scientific work from the 
foremost university in the world contains plates illustrating 

writing produced in this manner Very often the 

subject-matter of the writing found on the slates is beyond 
the knowledge of the psychic. Greek has been written on 
slates, and found to be accurate, when the ps} r chic knew 
nothing of the language. It is thought by Zollner and his 






SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 83 

associates to be demonstrably impossible to produce these 

results by fraud Zollner undertakes to face all 

Germany with experiments like these. He affirms that 
Weber, Fechner, and Scheibner agree with him, and Leipzig 
University keeps him in his place. 

* ' The mechanical theoiy of matter is exploded if Z611- 
ner's alleged facts can be proved to be real, but here are 
grave experts who unite in assuring the world that these 
events occurred under their own e3 T e-sight. Here is the 
Court Conjurer, who sa}^s he can do nothing of the kind. 
I hold in my hand a volume by Fichte, and he sa3 T s, quoting 
these experiments, and naming the professors who per- 
formed them, that he could himself, if he were authorized, 
give in addition to these names many others in German} 7 , 
who by the experiments at Leipzig had been convinced of 
the reality of the facts, and of their worthiness to be made 
the subject of scientific research. (Fichte, Der neuere 
Spiritualismus. Leipzig: Brockhaus. 1878. p. 104.)" 

The Leipzig experiment of t} 7 ing knots in an endless cord 
was repeated hy my correspondent, Dr. T. L. Nichols, 32 
Fopstone-road, London, in April, 1878. In his description 
he sa} T s : " It is certain that no mortal man could have tied 
these knots — equally certain that all the philosophers and 
all the magicians of Europe cannot now untie them under 
the same conditions." 

Zollner illustrates his experiment by a large plate, 
showing the condition of the cord, and that no theory of 
legerdemain can explain what was accomplished. 

That the psychic force is under the control of spirits, as 
well as of men under certain abnormal conditions, is the 
rational conclusion. It was the conclusion of Cicero, of 
Plutarch, and of St. Augustine. 

The Rev. Joseph Cook draws a distinction between the 
superhuman and the supernatural : a theological specula- 
tion which no one can gainsay, since it does not belong to 
the domain of the demonstrable. The doings, however 
marvellous, of all finite spirits, may not be supernatural 



84 



FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 



except in the sense that the}' maj 7 be empowered by the 
only Being superior to Nature, because its Author. Tran- 
scendental Physics, initiated by the renewed attention of 
modern times to psychical phenomena, are in perfect har- 
mony with the dominant teachings of the Bible in respect 
to the nature of man and the power of spirits. 

The accomplished Hindoo preacher and medium, Baboo 
Chund Mittra, in an address delivered at Calcutta, January, 
1879, advocating the scientific claims of Spiritualism, 
remarked : ' ' The God of science is my God ; he who in all 
ages works wonders, and continually exhibits his wisdom, 
power, and love throughout the amplitudes of nature. All 
science is religion, and all religion is science. There is as 
much science in prayer as in the locomotive engine ; as 
much science in inspiration as in the microscope and tele- 
graph wire." 

Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, (1802-1878,) the lady who 
was once betrothed to the poet Poe, and with whom I had 
a good deal of correspondence on the subject of Spirit- 
ualism, remarked, among her other acute observations on 
the subject : " The occult ps} T chical energies that lie folded 
up within us, are pointing to a rich and unexplored domain 
of our mysterious inner life ; and the knowledge of this 
winged, expansive nature, that has long lain dimly dream- 
ing within its chrysalis, is revealed to us precisely at the 
epoch when the rapid progress of physical science threat- 
ened to banish the last faint vestiges of our faith in spiritual 
causation and spiritual influence." 

The New York Scientific American, unfriendly to Spirit- 
ualism, makes this admission : " If true, it will become the 
one grand event of the world's histor}^ and will give an 

imperishable lustre of glory to the nineteenth century 

If the pretensions of Spiritualism have a rational founda- 
tion, no more important work has been offered to men than 
their verification." 



SPIRITUAL PROOFS. 85 

To ask for the cui bono of such a revelation — to insin- 
uate that we do not need it — is at once to ignore the 
growing unbelief of the times, and to mock at the most 
sacred hopes and religious intuitions of the majority of 
mankind. 

This universe, be sure, is not an infinite contrivance for 
the production and swift extinction of sentient, loving, in- 
telligent life ; — it is not a stupendous vestibule to a charnel- 
house, — where affection, friendship, science, and art find 
congenial and progressive recipients for a few fleeting 
moments, and man is admitted to a glimpse of a possible 
happiness and growth, and then plunged into the blackness 
of annihilation ; — a world where life and mind are given 
only to be withdrawn, as if in mockery, and truth and 
goodness are as evanescent as falsehood and evil. 

Spiritualism, by its objective, supersensual, and verifiable 
facts, declares to us that this pessimistic view of things is 
radically wrong ; that all this grand display of suns and 
systems is not " a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing ;" 
that the infinite magnitude and variety of the universe ought 
to impress us as an earnest of our immortality — for what 
are all these wonders without minds to study and enjoy 
them ? — ■ that states of consciousness may subside and give 
place to other states, but that they are all reproducible, and 
in that sense, eternal, since memory holds forever in its 
occult receptacles all the impressions it takes ; — and that 
a present good is an inalienable good forever, never to be 
lost by the soul that once felt its power ; — that love is a 
divine principle of our nature which grows by giving, ex- 
pands by imparting, and is the spring of a fresh and ever- 
lasting joy ; — that death is merely a release from an organ- 
ism for which the soul has ready a far nobler, though to 
our coarse mortal senses, invisible, substitute ; — that we are 
not orphans — nay, worse than orphans — flung out by a 
blind, remorseless Fate, our only parent, into an alien 



<J 



86 FACTS AGAINST THEORIES. 

universe, but that we are destined to have the freedom of 
every remotest planet, all intelligences forming one grand 
confraternity, interchanging love and knowledge ; that there 
is a conscious, a loving and omniscient Omnipotence pre- 
siding over all the details of this stupendous complex ; and 
that by beneficent and eternal laws every soul will gravitate, 
in the life to come, where it belongs, where it can best find 
what is congenial to the disposition it has formed here, and 
there continue till it can rise, by proper gradations and its 
own sincere efforts, to more worthy conditions, and take in 
at length a realization of the ineffable grandeur and the 
splendid possibilities of its inheritance, and aspire and 
strive accordingly. 

Such are the views which Spiritualism, broadly and faith- 
fully studied, suggests and justifies. The certainties pre- 
sented, in our two representative and fully-established facts, 
make credible analogous phenomena, fully attested, but not 
so easy of flawless exposition. The phenomena of direct 
writing and of clairvoyance have been chosen for a scientific 
basis, because there is not a flaw, nor a conceivable doubt, 
in the experimental method by which the} 7 have been and 
are daily certified and confirmed. 

There ma}' be other phenomena more surprising, and to 
an acquaintance with which a thorough conviction of these 
may safely introduce us ; but there are none that we know 
of which appeal more directly to the senses and the reason 
of the scientific investigator for their confirmation. Should 
all the mediums for direct writing be detected in tricks, they 
would not invalidate these phenomena until it could be 
proved that any skilful juggler, exercising no medial power, 
could produce the same under the same conditions. This, 
in the nature of things, cannot be done, since they involve 
the exercise of a faculty at once abnormal and transcendent, 
and are inexplicable without it. 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 87 



CHAPTER III. 

REPLY TO THE OBJECTIONS OP PROFESSOR WUNDT. 

All objections to the scientific investigation of a fact of 
nature must have ignorance or superstition at their root. 
Professor Wilhelm Wundt, of Leipzig, eminent as a meta- 
physical writer, is the author of a work on " The Axioms 
of Physics and their Relation to the Principle of Cau- 
sality." The subject is one which could hardly be treated 
exhaustively without some knowledge of those occult 
causes of motion which operate in the phenomena of Spir- 
itualism. Of these he seems to be ignorant. It is a great 
error of specialists in science to suppose that the chief claim 
of a belief in immortality to their attention is that it rests 
on the emotions. 

Because a man is proficient in one branch of science, it 
does not follow that his authority is of much value in an- 
other, with which his acquaintance is superficial. He may 
be an excellent geologist, and yet unqualified to decide a 
question in regard to the habits of bees. He may be a 
subtile logician like Mill, or an accomplished physiologist 
like Huxley, and yet a poor authority in musical science, 
and a mere blunderer when, after a slight examination, he 
would throw discredit on certain psychical phenomena, to 
which others, who have given to the subject the study of 
half a lifetime, may testify. The following reply to the 
objections raised by Professor Wundt to the prosecution 
of our investigations as matters of scientific interest, will 
explain itself : — - 



88 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

Your "Open Letter" to Professor Hermann Ulrici, of 
Halle, on " Spiritualism as a Scientific Question," has been 
translated and published in the "American Popular Science 
Monthly " for September, 1879. It appears that Ulrici, 
from whose views you dissent, had arrived at the conviction 
that the reality of certain facts, attested by eminent men 
of science, can no longer be doubted, and that Spiritual- 
ism, so called, has thus become a scientific question of the 
highest importance. 

It also appears that there were present at the seances 
held with Henry Slade at Leipzic in 1877, besides those 
professors who became convinced of the actuality of the 
spiritualistic phenomena, certain other members of the 
univershry, who did not appear to share this conviction. 
Of these latter you were one ; and Ulrici, it would seem, 
in his " Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und philosopliische 
Kritik" called upon the dissenters to state publicly what 
they saw ; why they doubt the objective reality of what 
they saw ; and why they feel compelled to assume jugglery, 
deceit, or illusion. 

On this last point your mind, if I may judge from your 
language, is still in a state of indecision. There are pas- 
sages in which you seem to admit frankly the objectivity 
and inexplicable character of the phenomena ; and there 
are others in which you suggest "jugglery" as the solu- 
tion, and charge the medium with untruthfulness in claim- 
ing to be a passive instrument. The two reasons on which 
you found this charge so obviously proceed from an igno- 
rance of the facts and theories pertaining to medial devel- 
opment, that they can be very readily confuted. 

Meanwhile the proofs of your hesitancy are these : — In 
your second paragraph, addressing Ulrici, you say: "For 
merely subjective phantasms of the observers, these phe- 
nomena, as you justly remark, cannot be held ; their ob- 
jectivity and reality in the ordinary sense of the word will 






SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 89 

in fact be questioned by no man who may even have read 
only 3'our short description." 

Again, in paragraph 15, you write: " If 3 T ou ask me 
now whether I am in a condition to express a conjecture as 
to how these experiments were performed, I answer, No. 
At the same time, however, I must state that phenomena 
of this sort lie entirely outside the domain of the special 
training which I have acquired during my scientific career:" 
And in the same paragraph you remark : ' ' You will cer- 
tainty find it justifiable, if I do not go into Irypotheses as 
to how the phenomena produced by Mr. Slade were brought 
about." 

After these ingenuous concessions to the truth, I was 
certainly surprised to find } t ou, in paragraph 16, suddenly 
breaking through these wise limitations of your candor, 
and suggesting the old and ten thousand times exploded 
theory of juggleiy ; for you say: "As to the experiments 
which I saw myself, I believe that they will not fail to pro- 
duce upon every unprejudiced reader who has ever seen 
skilful prestidigitations the impression of well-managed 
feats of jugglery." And again: "I cannot find that any 
one of the experiments which I saw with Mr. Slade was 
above the powers of a good juggler." 

Yet in the paragraph before, you had confessed j t ou were 
not " in a condition to express a conjecture as to how these 
experiments were performed." Such inconsistencies are 
lamentably out of place in what assumes to be a rigorous 
examination of a scientific question. Thej 7 suggest the 
impression that you have not realty yet made up jour mind 
on the subject. 

There is an obstacle in the way of your theorj^ of jug- 
glery, and you try to remove it in a somewhat off-hand and 
'cavalier manner. The important testimou}' of Bellachini 
(see page 65 of this volume) you dismiss in three lines 
with the evasive remark, that you would acknowledge him 



90 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

as an authority, if you " could premise in his case that 
he had a conception of the . scientific scope of the question." 
Under this euphuism, what lies concealed? What but an 
imputation on the veracity of the affiant ? What is inatten- 
tion to the ' ' scientific scope of a question " addressed to 
an expert, but inattention to the truth of a question ? You 
intimate that Bellachini was careless as to the truth of what 
he solemnly asserts in regard to a matter he was employed 
to investigate. His professional reputation was risked in 
his being outwitted by a competing juggler ; and yet be- 
cause, with the courage of an houest man, he declares that 
there was no prestidigitation possible in the inexplicable 
occurrences at the Slade seances, you, to give countenance 
to yx>ur own vacillating second thoughts on the subject, 
presume to impugn his truthfulness. 

In arguing against the claims of Spiritualism to scientific 
recognition, you put these two questions: (1) What are- 
the characterizing marks of a scientific authority? (2) What 
influence may ive concede to outside authority upon our own 
knowledge ? 

You say, with truth : ' ' The highest degree of credibility 
is not sufficient to make any man a scientific authority ; 
there is requisite to this a special professional, and indeed 
a technical training, which must have approved itself by 
superior accomplishments in the province concerned." . . . 
(Precisely such a training as Bellachini had for detecting a 
trick, if there was one !) "In order to be able to speak 
with authority concerning any phenomena, one must pos- 
sess a thorough, critical knowledge of the same." 

Influenced by considerations like these, I might reason- 
ably maintain that investigators, thoroughly acquainted 
with our phenomena, are more competent to judge of them, 
than any specialist in some other branch of science. You 
are here sustained in jour views by the very class whose 
belief you would stamp as unscientific. 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 91 

You further say: ''Authorities in the present case, 
therefore, are only such persons as either possess meclium- 
istic powers, or, without claiming to be bearers of such 
properties, are able to produce phenomena of the same 
nature," 

Here you show a profound ignorance of the nature of 
the medial manifestations. The persons who, without pos- 
sessing medial power, are "able to produce phenomena of 
the same nature " in the same way that they are produced 
in the presence of mediums, are as yet a wholly imaginary 
class. There have been, ever since the year 1847, char- 
latans and swindlers, or else renegade mediums, who have 
pretended to be exposers of medial phenomena ; but in no 
one trifling instance have these impostors been able to ex- 
plain, outside of the spiritual hypothesis, any one actual 
phenomenon in such a way that it could be produced by 
non-medial persons as it is through genuine mediums. 1 
defy saiy man to prove the contrary. The pretended ex- 
posers have at times fooled eminent opponents of Spirit- 
ualism, like Huxley and Carpenter, both in England and 
America ; but they have never taken the first step towards 
enlightening a person, really and practically acquainted 
with the subject, as to the modus operandi. This shows 
that you are clearly right in your remark, that ' ' in order 
to be able to speak with authority concerning any phenom- 
ena, one must possess a thorough, critical knowledge of 
the same." 

Your notion that mediums themselves are authorities as 
to the phenomena, or that they possess a thorough, critical 
knowledge of the same, is true onry in a few remarkable 
instances, and in those only to a limited extent. The 
most powerful mediums are almost always, while the phe- 
nomena are going on, in a state of trance or nervous exal- 
tation wholly unfitted for critical observation. That they 
sometimes believe they are under the influence of some 



92 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

spirit who may discourse through their lips on the character 
of the phenomena and try to explain them, is quite true ; 
but such testimony is not accepted as scientific, except so 
far as it satisfies human reason. Your statement, there- 
fore, as to what is authority in the case is wholly fallacious, 
and merely betrays } T our ignorance of the whole subject. 

The two general questions which I have quoted, and 
which you yourself undertake to answer, lead joxi into an 
assumption, upon which the whole weight of your argu- 
ment, as to the non-scientific character of the claims of 
Spiritualism, is made to depend. But the assumption is 
grossly arbitrary and fallacious ; it is expressed by } T ou in 
various forms, of which I select the following : 

(1) There rules in nature neither freak nor accident. . . . 
On the contrary, the most conspicuous characteristic of 
these phenomena lies precisely in the fact that in their 
presence the laws of nature seem to be abrogated. 

(2) The laws of gravitation, of electricit}^, of light, and 
of heat are altogether, as we are assured, of a purely 
hypothetical valid ity ; the}^ have authority so long as the 
inexplicable, spiritualistic something does not cross them. 

(3) On the one side stands the authority of the whole 
history of science, the totality of all known natural laws, 
which have not only been discovered under the presupposi- 
tion of a universal causality, but have also without excep- 
tion confirmed the same. 

(4) On the other side stands the authority of a few cer- 
tainly most eminent naturalists, who . . . announce the 
discovery that causality has a flaw, and that we must con- 
sequently abandon our former view of nature. 

Your complaint that the laws of nature are abrogated by 
the phenomena is as irrational and inane as were the objec- 
tions of those persons who, when telescopes and micro- 
scopes were invented, denounced them as atheistic innova- 
tions ; or as were the outcries of those who opposed the 
theory of the rotundity of the earth and the existence of 
the antipodes as unscientific. How could men be supposed 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 93 

to walk with their heads down in space like flies on a 
ceiling ! 

In order to make a show of a scientific reason for your 
objection, you are obliged to assume what science gives 
you no authority to assume, namely, that there are no 
such beings as spirits, invisible to human sight, but exer- 
cising wonderful, though limited, powers over matter. I 
offset 3 T our mere hypothesis with another, which is, that 
there are such beings in existence ; and I assert that there 
are proofs of it. Since there is no proof whatever to the 
contrary, your reiteration of the assertion that our facts 
clash with the laws of nature, is the mere repetition of a 
conjecture of jouv own, having no scientific validity what- 
ever. 

You assume that when a man is lifted to the ceiling by 
no known human means or appliances, the law of gravita- 
tion is violated. But, with a purely arbitrary indifference, 
you leave out of sight entirely the possibility that the levi- 
tation may be effected by the power of spirits, substan- 
tially organized, though invisible to our coarse natural 
senses : in which case the law of gravitation is no more 
violated than it is when a man turns a somerset. If the 
" laws of gravitation, of electricity, of light, and of 
heat " (2) may be, to a limited extent, modified or sus- 
pended by human art, why may not spirits have a similar, 
though greatly superior power, and exercise it without an}^ 
breach either of the laws of nature or the principles of 
causality ? Your charge that these laws have a ' ' purely 
hypothetical validity " in the estimation of Spiritualists, is 
directly opposed to the truth ; for we believe that all phe- 
nomena whatever are in accordance with natural law. 

This cry that the laws of nature are contravened if our 
phenomena are true, has been common for the last thirty- 
five years. It is the chief ammunition of Mr. Youmans, 
of the Popular Science Monthly, in his war against Spirit- 



94 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

ualism ; and though it has been confuted thousands of 
times by well-known Spiritualists, such as Robert Cham- 
bers, Alfred R. Wallace, Professor De Morgan, and Robert 
Dale Owen, it is now gravely put forth in your letter as if 
it were a new and stunning objection. 

The man of imperfect science postulates " an inflexible 
order of nature;" but how does he know that there are 
not higher laws of nature, which he has not }~et discov- 
ered, but to which other laws are subordinate? It has 
been justly said of him , that when he assumes that Nature 
must do so and so because she has done so and so up to 
this time, he puts a subjective, nietaplrysical will behind 
his plrysical order of thiugs. 

My esteemed correspondent, Alfred Russell Wallace, 
must be well known to the German readers of Darwin's 
works as an eminent English naturalist He is also an 
outspoken Spiritualist. He has treated with his usual 
acuteness this constantly recurring objection (revived by 
you) of a contravention of the laws of nature. He says : 

' ' One common fallacy appears to me to run through all 
the arguments against facts deemed miraculous, when it is 
asserted that they violate, or invade, or subvert the laws 
of nature. This is really assuming the very point to be 
decided, for if the disputed fact did happen, it could only 
be in accordance with the laws of nature, since the only 
complete definition of the ' laws of nature ' is, that they 
are the laws which regulate all phenomena. 

" To refuse to admit what in other cases would be abso- 
lutely conclusive evidence of a fact, because it cannot be 
explained by those laws of nature with which we are now 
acquainted, is really to maintain that we have complete 
knowledge of those laws, and can determine beforehand 
what is or is not possible. 

"I assert, without fear of contradiction, that whenever 
the scientific men of any age have denied the facts of in- 
vestigation on a priori grounds, they have alwa} T s been 
wrong. . . . When Castallet informed Reaumur that he 
had reared perfect silkworms from the eggs laid by a virgin 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 95 

moth, the answer was, Ex niliilo nihil jit ; and the fact was 
disbelieved. It was contrary to one of the widest and best 
established laws of nature ; jQt it is now universally ad- 
mitted to be true, and the supposed law ceases to be uni- 
versal." 

You will thus see that your alarm lest the laws of nature 
should be "done awa}^ with," is quite gratuitous. The 
laws of nature, in her seen as well as her unseen spheres, 
will probably continue to be as secure and inflexible as 
they have been hitherto, undisturbed by the anxieties and 
misconstructions of fallible professors. 

You tell us (3) that " the authority of the whole history 
of science, the totality of all known natural laws," confirm 
without exception "the presupposition of a universal cau- 
sality." This presupposition is made justifiable by Spiritual- 
ism ; but it is not the authoritative declaration of absolute 
science. That one Mind rules in the universe is a legiti- 
mate inference from all the science we have thus far at- 
tained to ; but science cannot assert this inference as a part 
of itself. It cannot transcend phenomena and enter the 
realm of causalnVv, without leaving its own domain, and 
invading another where it cannot exist as science. Indeed, 
your views of a universal causality, "confirmed by the 
authority of the whole history of science," are quite op- 
posed to the conclusions of the great majority of the sci- 
entific naturalists of our day. 

Professor Newcomb, one of the leading men of science 
in America, in an address delivered recently at St. Louis 
before the American Scientific Association, contradicts, in 
the following words, your whole statement. He says : 
' k The entire course of nature is a series of mechanical 
sequences, from which all interference from outside causa- 
tion is entirely excluded." In this view (which I do not 
accept) , most of the physicists of our day concur. 

Even Kant tells us that the idea of cause, and also the 



96 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

belief that every commencing phenomenon implies the 
operation of a cause, are merely forms of our understand- 
ing, subjective conditions of human thought. You must 
have been well aware, too, that Hume is far from admitting 
your assertion. He contends that all we see or know is 
mere succession, antecedent and consequent ; that having 
seen things in this relation, we associate them together, 
and imagining that there is some vinculum or connection 
between them, we call the one the cause, and the other the 
effect. Thus your claim that 3 T our views in regard to cau- 
sation are a part of science does not hold good, — since 
speculations as to primary causation transcend phenomena 
which are the limits to which human science is confined. 

Your assertion (4) that the eminent naturalists who sat- 
isfied themselves of the objectivity and genuineness of the 
Slade phenomena " announce that causality has a flaw," is 
an unwarrantable perversion or an erroneous paraphrase 
of their language, made to suit your own peculiar purpose. 
The statement falls along with your other assumptions. 

You criticise the conditions under which the medial phe- 
nomena are produced ; but as these conditions can be intel- 
ligently judged only by a person long and practically ac- 
quainted with the subject, I shall not pause here to con- 
sider them. Nor is it necessary for me to analyze your 
account of your own seance with Mr. Slade, at which 
various "experiments" occurred, concerning which you 
confess that you cannot " express a conjecture" as to how 
they were done. 

Referring to your own inability to explain the experi- 
ments, and to Mr. Slade's inability to disclose the modus 
operandi, you remark : 

"What was surprising to me in the matter, however, 
and what will also surprise you, is that Mr. Slade also 
refused to give any information of this kind. He is a me- 
dium, he is an experimenter, and he must therefore know 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 97 

under what conditions the phenomena 'have their origin. 
He asserts that he knows nothing of them, but that his 
relation is a perfectly passive one. The latter, however, is 
plainly untrue, since the phenomena generally appear only 
in the seances held by him, and also, as a rule, in the order 
in which he wishes to produce them" 

That you, a philosopher and a man of science, should 
venture to discourse upon a great, complex, and momen- 
tous subject, occupying at this moment the attention of 
millions in all parts of the world, and requiring a great 
amount of stud} 7 and investigation for its proper under- 
standing, — with the very rudiments of which subject, if 
we may judge from the baseless vituperation in the pre- 
ceding paragraph, j^ou are as yet unacquainted, — is in- 
deed a matter of surprise. You make a medium the 
equivalent of an " experimenter." In this you exalt your 
own crude and random theory above the empirical knowl- 
edge of all those who have long and faithfully investigated 
the subject of mediumship. A medium is not regarded as 
the real "experimenter"; and Slade, if he is a medium, 
tells the truth in saying that his relation is a passive one. 
Both your reasons for charging him with mendacity are 
plainly the promptings of ignorance. They are frivolous, 
and they are erroneous. One of your reasons is that "the 
phenomena generally appear only in the seances held by 
him." On the conteury, phenomena, some of them more 
surprising than those in his presence, and under conditions 
more satisfactory, have been given in America b} 7 Watkins, 
Powell, Phillips, Mrs. Simpson, and by some private me- 
diums who decline to take money for the exhibition. 

Your second reason, namely, that the phenomena appear, 
"as a rule, in the order in which he wishes to produce 
them," is an assumption which, while it may be true in. 
what it asserts, is false in what it omits. The theory is, 
that if Slade wishes to produce phenomena in a certain 
7 



98 REPLY TO WUNDT, 

order, it is because the impressions he gets from his so- 
called "controls" incline him to choose that order. Your 
two reasons for charging untruthfulness on him do not 
stand the first incision of intelligent analysis. 

You wind up jour abuse of Slade (whose uniform hon- 
estjf I neither vouch for nor deny) with the remark, that 
this question of the reality or non-reality of the spiritual- 
istic phenomena would be for you " an extremely painful 
one," if you "had to regard as excluded every possible 
explanation of the phenomena in a natural way ; in a way 
which leaves the universal law of causation untouched." 

Causation again ! Violation of nature again ! My dear 
philosopher, be comforted. The appearance of a spirit in 
this mundane sphere, if it actually occurs, must be a 
purely natural fact, since nature embraces all demonstrable 
phenomena. The " universal law of causation " is no more 
violated or threatened by such a fact than it is when a 
balloon goes up in the air, or when a painless surgical 
operation is performed while the patient is under the effect 
of chloroform. May it not be that it is because you look 
through such a haze of mediaeval apprehension and dread, 
that Spiritualism assumes the amorphous aspect, the sin- 
ister colors, it does, in your eyes? 

You admit, for the sake of argument, that view of Ulrici 
and of most Spiritualists, which regards the manifesting 
spirits as those of our deceased fellow-men, who advise us 
in this way of their survival and their condition after 
death; and you ask, "What significance have the phe- 
nomena then?" 

Ulrici, it appears, has ventured the opinion that their 
significance lies, above all else, in the fact that nothing 
could more powerfully strengthen our faith in a supreme 
moral government of the world, nothing more surely coun- 
teract the materialism and indifferentism of the time, than 
the certainty of immortalit}-. 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 99 

The same view was held by the late I. H. Fichte, of 
Stuttgard (an illustrious and venerable name !), who antici- 
pated great benefit to the cause of religion and morality 
from an enlightened Spiritualism. His words are : u Here 
in the earth-life we have it in our power to seize our future 
destination." And he considered this a very serious rev- 
elation at a time when mankind have long since become 
accustomed to displace their care for the future from their 
t dailj T routine, as a consideration not affecting their interests. 

These anticipations are in full accord with those held by 
most Spiritualists, and seem to me eminently reasonable 
and apt. Imagine a time when generations of well-born 
children shall be brought up in the confident knowledge of 
immortality ; when the laws of pre-natal and post-natal 
influence shall be understood and heeded ; when a man 
-shall realize that what he thinks and does, he thinks and 
does for eternity, — and shall be sensible that a cloud of 
witnesses, the great and good of the past, as well as his 
own departed relatives and friends, not to speak of the 
Supreme Intelligence itself, have his inmost thoughts and 
most secret acts literally within their ken ; — and I can 
conceive of no possible evangel more likely to control a 
man for good, strengthen the best and most elevating im- 
pulses by which he is actuated, and keep him reverently 
loyal to divine law as expressed in his own organization 
and the facts of the universe. What can be more touching 
and noble than the written prayer of the young prince im- 
perial, slain by the Zulu savages in 1879, and whose father, 
Louis Napoleon, like himself, was a Spiritualist: "Grant, 
O God, that my heart may be penetrated with the convic- 
tion that those whom I love, and who are deceased, can 
see all my actions. Help me that my life shall be worthy 
of their witness, and my innermost thought shall never 
make them blush." 

From considerations like these you dissent with emphatic 



100 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

energy. You tell us that Ulrici acknowledges, indeed, 
that the written communications of the spirits ' ' have a 
very insignificant content," and that their other perform- 
ances also seem to be substantially to no purpose ; but that 
he consoles himself with the thought that ' ' the principle of 
development will also find its application in the other life, so 
that the souls of the dead only gradually attain the highest 
perfection of knowledge and will." 

A doctrine so rational and just, so consistent with all the 
analogies revealed in psychological investigation, and so 
reconcilable with all that we can conceive of divine good- 
ness, love, and wisdom, would seem to commend itself to a 
philosopher of liberal religious proclivities, But } T ou repu- 
diate it as if the spectral aspect of the old vicarious doc- 
trine had interposed to warn you off. You say : "Here, 
unfortunately, I must oppose } r our conclusions in the most 
decided manner. I hold these conclusions to be as false as 
they are dangerous, and of this I will endeavor to convince 
you and your readers." 

Your endeavor is a most signal failure, made the more 
manifest by the solemn confidence with which you intro- 
duce it. The Spiritual doctrine is in harmony with all the 
lofty religious thought of the age, even among those who 
do not recognize Spiritualism. Your own thought is medi- 
aeval and retrograde. You begin by charging upon Ulrici 
the assumption that phenomena, similar to those of Spirit- 
ualism, " have never been observed in former times." And 
you really seem to think that you have made a discoveiy, 
of which Spiritualists have been ignorant up to this time, 
and that you will bring them to confusion by 3 7 our superior 
sagacity. But the ignorance is all on your side, since }*ou 
assume what is contrary to notorious facts. 

Instead of supposing that " similar phenomena have never 
been observed in former times," Spiritualists have from the 
first maintained, as one of the most important of their cre« 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 10 1 

dentials, the striking fact that the present phenomena are 
corroborated and illustrated by those of all past ages. We 
find them in the mythologies and oracles of the ancients ; 
in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures ; na} T , even in the 
evidences given in Mr. E, B. Tylor's "Primitive Culture," 
of the universality of the spiritual belief among savage 
tribes, as far back as history or the knowledge got from 
prehistoric facts, revealed in geological investigations, 
can go. 

You refer to the history of witchcraft up to the 17th 
century as if you thought that you were enlightening Spir- 
itualists in regard to the analogy between many of its phe- 
nomena and those of the present time. But 3 T ou will find 
that the real facts of witchcraft, disengaged from much 
that was purely chimerical, fancifully subjective, or wan- 
tonly false, are accepted by Spiritualists as part of their 
own phenomena. 

In a work,* originally published in 1868, I say: "The 
annals of the race are full of these phenomena, back to the 
first dawn of authentic histor}\ They have been interro- 
gated and examined in a different spirit during the last 
quarter of a century ; and that is the only respect in which 
they can be said to differ from many of the phenomena of 
witchcraft, necromancy, somnambulism, mesmerism, &c, 
so long known and disputed." 

Blackstone, the great English legal authority (1723-80), 
says, in his Commentaries : "To deny the possibility, nay, 
actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly 
to contradict the revealed Word of God ; ... and the 
thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world 
hath borne testiinonj", either by examples seemingly well 
attested, or by prohibitory laws, which, at least, suppose 
the possibility of commerce with evil spirits." 

t See " Planchette, or the Despair of Science," p. 8. A seventh edition of the 
work was published by Roberts Brothers, Boston, in 1880, 



102 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

Mr. Lecky, in his "History of Rationalism " (1864), 
shows that the wisest men in Europe shared in the belief 
of the witchcraft phenomena. For hundreds of years no 
man of an} T account rejected it. Lord Bacon could not 
divest himself of it. Shakespeare accepted it, as did the 
most enlightened of his contemporaries. Glanvil, Henry 
More, Sir Thomas Browne, and other eminent thinkers, 
strenuously asserted it. 

You refer to these pheuomena as "lamentable expres- 
sions of a corrupting superstition." A more enlightened 
acquaintance with well-attested facts would convince you 
that the superstition was not in the admission of certain 
objective phenomena, but in the unscientific demonphobia 
which led men to misinterpret them, to lay a superstitious 
stress upon the old Hebrew prohibitions, made in ignorance 
and fear, and to allow the Church to dictate to the Legisla- 
ture as to the construction to be put on the manifestations. 
There are ' ' lamentable expressions " of evil in human na- 
ture ; and there may be " lamentable expressions" of evil 
among spirits, who are but the continuations of human 
nature into another stage of being. 

And now j^ou and other men of science are repeating the 
bad work which the priestly power, aided by the civil, did 
in former times. You are laboring to give the impression 
that these phenomena are not in the order of nature, and 
that therefore they must either be repudiated as not occur- 
ring, or else regarded with that sort of horror which the 
idea of the uncann} T and the unnatural awakens. 

The witchcraft frenzy, bursting beyond the limits of 
genuine phenomena, led to the grossest falsehoods, the 
most grotesque exaggerations, and the most merciless per- 
secutions ; and this for the simple reason that men, women, 
and children, who wished to bring an enemy to destruction, 
or, for some profitable reason, to put him out of the way, 
found a very simple means by fixing upon him or her the 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 103 

suspicion of practising witchcraft. But what chance could 
the counterfeit have had if there had not been a basis of 
the genuine? 

If there had been but a few eminent men in those days, 
practically acquainted with the great facts of somnambulism, 
mesmerism, and modern Spiritualism, in their purely scien- 
tific bearings, they could have arrested the whole terrible 
delusion. And if any such outbreak should occur again, 
the men who will appease the public alarm, and eliminate 
from the manifestations every element of superstition, would 
be, not the doctors and philosophers, who, like yourself, 
are now making the outcry that the phenomena violate 
natural laws, but the men who have carefully studied and 
witnessed them, and who know that they actually occur 
under certain abnormal conditions. 

You may smile at the thought that any such " delusion" 
should prevail in this scientific age ; but you must be im- 
perfectly acquainted with the facts if you do not know that 
phenomena in complete analogy with those of witchcraft 
have occurred sporadically up to the present time. In 
many families the stone-throwing manifestations, levita- 
tions, bell-ringing, the dressing-up of grotesque figures, 
mocking messages written independently of human agency, 
have occurred under circumstances that bar out the theory 
of human fraud. 

If you wish to become acquainted with a thoroughly 
authenticated history of occurrences indicating the diablerie 
of modern witchcraft, I would refer you to the account of 
those which took place in the house of the Rev. Dr. Phelps, 
at Stratford, Conn., from March, 1850, to December, 1851. 
You will find a full report of the case in ' ; Modern Spirit- 
ualism, by E. Capron," (Boston, 1855,) a work of candor 
and ability. In the year 1 850 I had a letter on the subject 
from Dr. Phelps himself, and published it in the '■' Boston 
Daily Transcript," which I was editing at the time. It 



104 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

fully authenticates the accounts of nrysterious writings 
"without human aid, the dressing-up of figures, the move- 
ment of objects, the throwing of stones, etc. Dr. Phelps 
was a man highly respected, sincere, and intelligent. The 
phenomena were confirmed as supra-human by the most 
ample testimony. His clear and thoroughly -tested facts 
have never been disproved, and the} T have been corroborated 
by man}" similar occurrences of more recent date. 

The ' ' lamentable expressions of a corrupting supersti- 
tion" were, you must remember, not confined to the lowly 
and obscure. The leading divines, lawyers, and legislators 
were under its influence. Their error was not in believing, 
but in misinterpreting facts. Do j T ou imagine they would 
have countenanced the atrocities perpetrated on innocent 
persons, unless they had become convinced, by observation 
and by testimony, of certain objective phenomena, which 
in their ignorance and alarm they construed as unnatural ? 
Suddenly a reaction took place. In Boston, several be- 
lievers publicly underwent penance in church, for their im- 
pious and merciless credulity. It was as if the community 
had awakened all at once from a dreadful nightmare. One 
day witchcraft seemed a fixed fact, and the next it was 
spurned and trodden out. Unquestionably, with much 
that was fanatical and false, much that was true was also 
stricken from the popular belief. From one extreme men 
went to the other, and a public opinion adverse to the phe- 
nomena, real and spurious, checked the development of 
mediums for the next century and a half. 

You put this question to Ulrici : " What conception must 
we form of the condition of our deceased fellow-men, if 
your view is correct?" And you think that he can urge 
"no material objections" against certain conclusions of 
your own, the first of which is as follows : 

"Physically the souls of our dead fall into the bondage of 
certain riving; men, the so-called mediums. These mediums 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 105 

are, at present at any rate, not very widely spread, and 
appear to belong almost exclusively to the American nation- 
ality. At the command of the mediums, the souls execute 
mechanical performances, which bear throughout the char- 
acter of purposelessness ; they knock, lift tables and chairs, 
play harmoniums, &c." 

Here is a series of charges, every one of which is, to put 
it mildly, a mistake : (1) The spirits are not in bondage 
to the mediums. By what logical process a medium can be 
converted into a principal, you do not explain. (2) The 
mediums are not " almost exclusively" American. Home, 
one of the earliest of the famous mediums, was a Scotch- 
man ; Mr. Williams, Mr. Eglinton, Miss Florence Cook, 
Miss Wood, Mrs. Guppy, Mr. Duguid, Mrs. Esperance, 
Dr. Monck, and some twenty others of note, are all English 
or Scotch. (3) The souls do not, " at the command of 
the mediums," execute mechanical performances. The 
phenomena are not producible at the will of the medium. 
(4) The performances do not " bear throughout the char- 
acter of purposelessness." 

You say that to knock or move a table is a l " purposeless" 
act. Suppose you were shut up in an enclosure from which 
you could not escape, and wished to make it known to the 
outside world of your friends that you were still alive ; — 
would it be so very " purposeless " an act for you to try by 
knocks or movements to make the fact of your existence 
known? The spirit, limited to certain conditions, sees that 
the friends he has left behind on earth believe that death is 
the end of being. Would any knock, movement, or musical 
sound, by which he could tvy to dispel the delusion, be a 
1 ' purposeless " or undignified act ? George Herbert tells 
us that he who "sweeps a room," in accordance with the 
divine sense of duty, dignifies the act. May not the motive 
transfigure the character of the spirit's humble attempt to 
gain recognition by a knock or the moving of a table ? 



106 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

The independent movement may be a very trivial act in 
itself, but when it is done without the application of any 
known human or mechanical force, it becomes so important 
in the e} r es of Farada} T , Haeckel, Youmans, and other 
physicists, as to assume the character of a miracle, which 
they must repudiate. Can an incredible act be a wholly 
purposeless act? 

Your whole letter illustrates the importance of studying 
a subject thoroughly before undertaking to pronounce upon 
it. You say : ' ' The assumption that the beings of some 
other world unknown to us would naturally resemble us, not 
only in their bodily constitution, but also in their dress, has 
to me only a very slight probability." Slight or not, jour 
notions of the probable must give way to facts. The spirits 
or angels of the Bible come in the form of human beings, 
suitably clad ; and the modern materialization phenomena 
show that spirits can often create for themselves some 
characteristic or emblematic garb, or at least what appears 
such to human senses. In nearly all the best authenticated 
accounts of apparitions, the spirit has come robed either in 
garments similar to those of the earth-life, or in "raiment 
shining, exceeding white as snow ; so as no fuller on earth 
can white them." 

If you had ever given a day's faithful stud}^ to the sub- 
ject, you would have learned that the forms and the clothing, 
in whicK°the materializing spirits appear, are assumed 
transit fcly, often for the simple purpose of identification. 
The^are not regarded as the abiding forms and clothing of 
the ' spirit. You make merry over the notion that a male 
spirit should appear with a foot deformed by a tight shoe ; 
and 3 r ou facetiously remark: "The thought that hard- 
hearted shoemakers might, even in the next world, Continue 
their attempts to improve the anatomical structure of our 
feet, gives me great uneasiness." 

Such facetiousness can amuse only the ignorant ; for it 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 107 

is founded on a gross, unspirituai misconception. Admit 
that a spirit can present a palpable and tangible repre- 
sentation of the earth-body, or of any part of it as it was 
at a certain period of its mortal existence : it does not follow 
that the spirit is itself " transformed into matter," as you 
wildly imagine. 

Of the spiritual body, the Rev. Joseph Cook (who is not 
a Spiritualist), remarks : " It is a body, which apparently 
makes nothing of passing through what we call ordinary 
matter. Our Lord had that body after his resurrection. 
He appeared suddenly in the midst of his disciples, although 

the doors were shut We must not forget that this 

conclusion is proclaimed in the name of the philosophy of 
the severest sort. The verdict is scientific ; it happens also 
to be biblical." 

Because it was Christ's spiritual body that passed into 
the room with shut doors, it does not follow that it Was his 
spiritual body which became visible to his disciples. He 
had, as a spirit, the power of improvising and externalizing 
a material representation of the earth-body with its wounds. 
The history of modern Spiritualism is full of similar phe- 
nomena. Christ came to show that death is a delusion, 
and that man is potentially a man still, after the dissolution 
of all that is mortal of him. 

Another spirit wishes to show that he ty& intelligence ; 
that his affections are unchanged ; that he has jk lost his 
love of music. So he sends loving messages ; so L, ? . plays 
on the harmonium a tune, known, perhaps, as his favorite, 
to some one present. Shall we condemn it as a purpose- 
less act ? You say : 

" The moral condition of the souls seems to be relatively 
the most favorable. According to all the evidence, the 
character of harmlessness cannot be denied them. It shows 
itself particularly in the fact that they hold it to be neces- 
sary to make excuses for proceedings of a somewhat brutal 



108 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

nature, in case of becoming guilty of such — as, for instance, 
the destruction of a bed-screen, with a politeness which, in 
a ghost, is certainly deserving of acknowledgment. This 
harmlessness, therefore, gives us a right to expect some- 
thing good of their other moral qualities, concerning which 
nothing particular is known." 

Upon this you remark : " Pardon me if I seem to joke." 
You may rest assured that no apology is needed ; your 
jocular allusions are of so mild and harmless a quality, that 
their point is not felt by any one versed in Spiritualism. 
A bed -screen was destro}*ed, and the operating forces (to 
which you choose to give the name of ghosts) politely made 
excuses. " This harmlessness," you say, gives you "a right 
to expect something good of their other moral qualities, 
concerning which nothing particular is known." Known by 
yourself, — you should have added. The "other moral 
qualities " of the supposed spirits have been expressed in a 
multiplicity of forms. As the theo^ is that there are all 
grades of good and bad, stupid and intelligent, in spirit- 
life as well as in this, we get just what we ought to expect, 
if our expectations are based on well-established facts. 

You charge Ulrici with "suddenly throwing overboard 
all principles of scientific investigation, in order to find in 
the revelations of rapping spirits the means of supplement- 
ing our insight into the order of the world \" and you ask, 
in your consternation, "Whence is the scientific investi- 
gator to get courage and perseverance for his work, if the 
laws of nature, according to the prospect which you open, 
are approaching a point where they shall be done away 
with?" 

I have already answered your constantly-recurring ques- 
tion on this point. Let me answer it again, since it ex- 
presses the great objection of those scientific specialists, 
who become ver}^ unscientific the* moment the subject of 
Spiritualism comes up. From the connection of the phe^ 






SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 109 

nomena with physiological conditions, they appear to be as 
purely a part of nature as the phenomena of the living 
organism. When an instrument is played on without human 
agency, when a medium is lifted to the ceiling, when inde- 
pendent writing is produced under conditions without a 
flaw, when objects are independently moved from place to 
place in broad daylight, when human forms appear pal- 
pably, — the manifestations have their objective as well as 
their subjective side. They are as much entitled to scientific 
scrutiny as any other phenomena in nature ; and to say that 
they are supernatural, is plainly to prejudge the question 
ignorantly. 

The reputation of the late Baden Powell (1796-1850) 
of England, is perhaps not unknown to you. He was 
Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford, and a profoundly 
scientific thinker. He believed that spiritual phenomena 
would be recognized as a part of the domain of nature, and 
become a subject for philosophic investigation. His pre- 
diction has been already verified, as the writings of Wallace, 
Variey, Crookes, Fichte, Franz Hoffman, Zollner, Bout- 
lerof, Hare, Wagner, and other men of science, amply show. 
Keferrmg to supersensual phenomena, Powell says: "In 
such cases, science has not yet advanced to any generaliza- 
tions ; results only are presented, which have not as yet 
been traced to laws ; yet no inductive inquirer for a moment 
doubts that these classes of phenomena are all really con- 
nected by some great principle of order. If, then, some 
peculiar manifestations should appear of a more extraor- 
dinary character, still less apparently reducible to &ny known 
principles, it could not be doubted by any philosophic mind 
that they were in reality harmonious and conspiring parts of 
some higher series of causes as yet undiscovered. The most 
formidable outstanding apparent anomalies will, at some 
future time, undoubtedly be found to merge in great and 
harmonious laws, the connection will be full}* made out, 



110 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

and the claims of order, continuity, and analogy, eventually 
vindicated." 

This is the large and liberal scientific view. Let it 
assuage your alarm, my dear professor. It is a full and 
conclusive reply to the objections of supernaturalism, vio- 
lation of nature's laws, etc., brought by yourself, and by 
many before you, who passed sentence on Spiritualism 
before they had studied it. 

You say, that " the worst enemy of morality has always 
been superstition." Most true. But whence came the 
superstition during the witchcraft craze of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries? It was a superstition, I repeat, 
that affected eminent divines like Mather, judges like Sewall, 
and magistrates like Sir William Phipps : inciting them to 
countenance the persecutions with which persons suspected 
of witchcraft were visited. The superstition sprang from 
an ignorant misconstruction of actual phenomena, and was 
encouraged by the bibliolatrj', the bigotry, aud the fear 
influencing the action of priests and their dupes. In ostra- 
cising these now common phenomena as unnatural or super- 
natural, jou and your co-workers are doing what you can 
to discourage a scientific investigation into their origin. To 
the developments of the present day } t ou are opposing the 
same hindrances and superstitions which prevented a thor- 
oughly scientific inquiiy into the witchcraft manifestations. 
You would stop what } x ou call the ' ' spiritualistic nuisances " 
prevailing in America ; and by this 3'ou do not mean that 
you would stop the abuses and the credulities, springing 
from an unscientific manner of dealing with the facts, but 
the facts themselves. You would repudiate the whole great 
inquiry as something contrary to the order of nature and 
the laws of Divine Causation. Possibly you and your 
helpers may succeed in checking the phenomena, and in 
putting off their investigation for another century ; but I 
am encouraged by the signs of the times to believe that you 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. Ill 

will be defeated. The Sibyl presents her books anew. 
Shall we reject them all? 

The following passage from jrour letter is somewhat 
obscure and equivocal ; but I will try to do it justice : 

' ' The moral barbarism produced in its time by the belief 
in witchcraft, would have been precisely the same if there 
had been real witches. We can, therefore, leave the question 
entirely alone, whether or not you have ground to believe in 
the Spiritualistic phenomena. We can content ourselves 
with considering the question, whether the objects of your 
belief show the characteristic signs which we find in those 
objects of belief which, according to the testimony of his- 
tory and of social ps3'chology, we must call prejudicial to 
the moral development of man. This question, after the 
intimate relation which we have shown to exist between 
spiritualism and the most corrupt forms of so-called super- 
stition, can only be answered in the affirmative." 

What if some disbeliever in Christianity, referring to the 
Inquisition, or to the atrocities of Philip II. of Spain, all 
instituted in the interests of religion, — or to the obscenities 
of the Anabaptists and other sects, — should say : ' ' The 
moral barbarism produced in its time by the belief in 
Christianity, would have been precisely the same if Chris- 
tian^ had been true. We can, therefore, leave the ques- 
tion of the truth of Christianity entirely alone. We can 
content ourselves with asking, Was it found prejudicial to 
the moral development of man ? This question can only be 
answered in the affirmative." 

Plausible as this may seem, would it not be repudiated 
by Christians generally as a view narrow and unjust? 
Because the phenomena of witchcraft, regarded from the 
standpoint of ignorance and religious terror, were produc- 
tive of evil, does it follow that they would not be produc- 
tive of good, because productive of knowledge, if regarded 
and studied with scientific coolness and philosophic pre- 
cision, abstracted from all superstition^ all religious super- 



112 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

fluity, all chimerical dread of a violation of nature's 
order ? 

Among the "demoralizing influences" of Spiritualism, 
you instance ' ' the danger of estrangement from earnest 
work, devoted to the service of science or of a practical 
calling." But the theory is, that after a proper amount of 
investigation and discussion by competent persons, the 
facts of Spiritualism will be as well understood and as freely 
admitted as the facts of chemistry or anatomy ; that coming 
generations will be educated in a knowledge of the facts. 
If this view is correct, it will only be a few specialists with 
a taste for the study, who will be " estranged from earnest 
work" in other directions. Your alarm here, too, is wholly 
supererogatory. 

You say : "Of far greater importance are the unworthy 
conceptions of the condition of the spirit after death, which 
these phenomena awaken, and which find their analogy only 
in the so-called animism of the most degraded races." 
Twelve lines farther on you remark : 

"Astonishingly, however, you see in Spiritualism nothing 
less than a contrivance of Providence for counteracting the 
materialism of the present. This is to me the most incom- 
prehensible part of 3'our essay. I see in Spiritualism, on 
the contrary, a sign of the materialism and the barbarism 
of our time. From early times, as you well know, mate- 
rialism has had two forms ; the one denies the spiritual, the 
other transforms it into matter. The latter form is the 
older. From the animism of the popular mythologies, it 
passes into philosophy, in order to be by the latter grad- 
ually overcome. As civilized barbarism can experience 
relapses into all forms of primitive conditions, so it is not 
spared from this also. That, in joxn: person, philosophy 
too has shared in this relapse, I count most melancholy." 

The essential question is not, What does this or that man, 
however eminent, imagine will be the effects ? — but, Is it a 
fact of nature ? If that is once settled in the affirmative, 
the true wisdom is to leave the results to Providence. 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 113 

You assume that it is " an unworthy conception of the 
condition of the spirit after death," to suppose that it may 
manifest many of the low traits of character which it mani- 
fested in the earth-life. I assume that the identity of the 
individual would not be preserved, unless this were not only 
possible but probable. But the question is not, Are these 
things esthetically agreeable ? but, Are they true ? 

You are grieved because eminent men see in these phe- 
nomena what you are pleased to call " a contrivance of 
Providence for counteracting the materialism of the present." 
What is there irreverent or irrational in the opinion? Just 
as a materialistic science dreamed it was having things its 
own way, — driving God and Spirit out of men's minds, and 
educating a generation of unbelievers in regard to a future 
life and the realities of the unseen world, — just at this 
critical moment, when faith in aught but matter and motion 
seemed to be dying out of the hearts of men, — up starts 
this ill-favored, this perplexing and exasperating Spiritual- 
ism — this marplot — this enfant terrible — and attracts, I 
know not how many, deserters from the ranks of a Saddu- 
cean materialism. It has already carried the full assurance 
of immortality to millions of minds all over the world. It 
has converted many from the direst unbelief ; and in thirty- 
three years it has permeated humanity to an extent unpar- 
alleled in the history of creeds. If there are such beings 
as spirits, is it so very incredible that the present phenom- 
ena have been providentially permitted ? 

You see in Spiritualism " a sign of the materialism and 
barbarism of our times." Here again the essential question 
is, Are the phenomena true ? If so, the scientific recogni- 
tion of them is simply a sign of the advancing intelligence 
^of our times. The facts appeal to different minds in differ- 
ent ways, according to our state of receptivity. That a 
mischievous construction is put on them by man}", is merely 
to say that eveiy great gift or truth from God may be mis- 
8 



114 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

construed or abused. The vine is a divine gift, but from 
its fruit a maddening beverage may be distilled. That a 
good and profitable construction is put on the phenomena 
by many, has been proved by their changed lives and 
characters, and by their rising to a comprehension of the 
immense significance of an immortal life. 

What you call ' ' the animism * of the popular mytholo- 
gies," is simply a belief in the objectivity of apparitions ; 
which, as an apparition is something that appears, would 
seem to be a not wholly unreasonable theory. Transferred 
to our own day, in Europe and America, the belief becomes, 
in your opinion, " civilized barbarism." Now, if yoxi had 
studied with proper attention the subject in regard to which 
you affect an oracular tone, 3~ou would have learned that 
this same animism, with the variations attributable to 
different intellectual grades, permeates the entire pneuma- 
tolog} r of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures ; that it was 
held and illustrated in his own person by Christ ; believed 
in by his apostles, and by John the Eevelator ; and that it 
was most distinctly the faith of the early Christian fathers, 
down to the fifth century, as the writings of Tertullian, 
Origen, and others indicate. 

What these "degraded races," of whose animism you 
have such a horror, really believed, in respect to immor- 
tality, was clearly based on certain objective facts, very 
common in our own day, and which our new psj-cho -physi- 
cal science is destined to study and co-ordinate : — facts 
tending to show that the spirit is the man himself ; that his 
personality is permanent. But that new organisms may be 
evolved as adaptations to the progressive stages of his 
existence is, perhaps, among the possibilities. 

If you choose, like some of the English atheists, Leslie 

* A word appropriated by Mr. E. B. Tylor, in his " Primitive Culture," to 
express the recognition, throughout all the races of mankind, of the soul as a 
distinct entity. 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 115 

Stephen, the late Professor Clifford, and others, to denounce 
this belief as rnerelj r " a grosser sort of materialism," you 
are simply giving a bad name to what the great seers of 
all the ages have intuitively accepted. There is nothing 
in this belief which the most advanced science can stamp 
as unscientific. It violates no principle of chemist^, me- 
chanics, or physics generally. The lrypothesis of a super- 
sensual organism, developed pari-passu with the physical, 
and acting between it and the life inflowing from the Divine 
Source of all things, is not only a purely rational concep- 
tion, but one corroborated by innumerable facts. 

The pneumatology of Spiritualism, like that of the 
Bible, the North American Indians, and other ''degraded 
races," teaches us that apparitions of deceased persons 
may be (1) either those visible only to the spiritual senses 
of the medium or seer ; or (2) those that are visible to 
the normal senses of a promiscuous assemblage, like that 
which saw Christ enter the room with closed doors. In 
both cases, the question whether the apparition is com- 
posed of what our human senses recognize as matter, is 
left open. The fact that an apparition maj 7 be not only 
visible but tangible would seem to justify the belief that 
the spirit has power to use some grade of evanescent ma- 
teriality in presenting a simulacrum of its earth-body. It 
is not at all likely that the "degraded races" trouble 
themselves with the distinction between material substance 
and spiritual substance. But what they can see and touch 
they believe in as something having form and substance of 
some kind, and as oceup}~ing space. And in this they are 
plainly right — however it may affect you as "materialism." 

In regard to the constituent nature of the so-called spir- 
itual body we do not presume to dogmatize. Whether 
mind is an organism or the result of an organism, is not 
the question. All that Spiritualism teaches on the subject 
is that the spirit or soul is not an abstract, thinking prin- 



116 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

ciple, but the accompaniment or expression of a distinct 
substance and form, dwelling in the physical body, and 
independent of it when that body dies. 

The act of clairvo}^ance involves the existence of a spir- 
itual faculty inhering in something distinct from gross, vis- 
ible matter. . If man is ever to exist after the dissolution 
of the terrestrial body, then must he be already, in his ter- 
restrial life, a spirit though circumscribed by organs adapt- 
ing him to it ; and he should be able to manifest, under 
certain conditions, foregleams of his spiritual and immortal 
nature. That he does this we have the proofs. 

Whether matter and spirit are distinct in their ultimate 
essence is a question the solution of which does not affect 
the facts on which the Spiritual theory is grounded. But 
when you charge it upon Spiritualism that it " transforms 
the Spiritual into matter," you again misrepresent the fact. 
On the contrar}', it makes mind, Spirit, the Master of matter, 
exercising a power over it so inconceivable to our finite 
faculties, that Zollner has to resort to Kant's hard hypoth- 
esis of a fifth dimension in space in order to bring the 
seeming miracle within the sphere of an obscure scientific 
solution. 

That which underlies both matter and spirit, and is their 
substance, " fulgurates" forth, or flows forth, as Leibnitz 
and Swedenborg both teach, from the Divine Substance ; 
but we do not confound the Spiritual principle which con- 
trols matter with matter itself; nor do we confound the 
Spirit-body with the Spirit itself. 

You must be aware that the two greatest philosophers 
that Germany has produced, Leibnitz and Kant, were to a 
great extent sharers in the belief which you account as 
"most melancholy." Leibnitz insisted that in regard to 
every finite intelligence, the soul is necessarily alwa} T s 
clothed with a material body, more or less attenuated, — 
(pure animism of the " degraded races ! " ) ; — and that it 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 117 

finds in its spiritual body of the Pauline tj-pe fresh organs 
of consciousness. Kant predicted that there will come a 
day when it will be demonstrated that there is " a com- 
munion actual and indissoluble" between the world of 
spirits and the human soul throughout its terrestrial ex- 
istence. (The animism of the lower races again !) It is 
true that Kant speaks of spirits in this connection as 
".immaterial natures ; " but that does not conflict with the 
application of the notion that they may require substan- 
tial organisms through which to express such natures, 
and realize the wealth of God's universe, visible and in- 
visible. I. H. Fichte, shortly before he died, in 1879, 
wrote of our phenomena : ' ' Belief in the immortality of 
the soul is ratified by these evidences of psychical expe- 
rience." 

Augustine (a. d. 430) and Thomas Aquinas (a. d. 1274) 
both wrote in favor of the soul's immateriality ; but the 
former postulated a subtile corporeal substance, the germ 
or equivalent of a body like that, for belief in which you 
charge the " degraded races" with " animism." Aquinas, 
deriving his doctrine from the Neo-Platonists, teaches that 
there are immaterial forms (format separatee), and that 
these are individualized by themselves, since they have no 
need, for their existence, of a form-receiving substratum ; 
The fallacy of this view is clearly exposed by Duns Scotus, 
and some of the earlier opponents of Thomas. 

It was not till his theory was taught by Descartes (1640) 
that it had much influence on the popular belief. Then the 
Pauline doctrine of a spiritual body being superseded 
largely in the minds of scholars, the common belief became 
" small by degrees" till it subsided into a vacuum of skep- 
ticism, justifying this remark by Mr. W. R. Greg in re- 
gard to the doctrine of immortality: "Let it rest in the 
vague, if you would have it rest unshaken." 

Is it because we Spiritualists do not allow it to " rest in 



118 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

the vague" but re-assert the rational Pauline doctrine, and 
bring it forward as an inference of science, that you call its 
adoption by such philosophers as I. H. Fichte, Franz 
Hoffman, and others, a "relapse"? 

Tylor, in his "Primitive Culture," tells us that the 
" animism of the degraded races," into which }*ou fear we 
are "relapsing," was the conception of an "apparition- 
soul or ghost-soul, its substance impalpable and invisible." 
Are we, then, quite sure, that even in their notions of the 
soul's organism in a future life, the}^ were so "grossly ma- 
terialistic " as jou. charge them with being ? 

Professor Miiller tells us that even "the same people 
who believed in fetiches cherished at the same time very 
pure, very exalted, very true sentiments of the Deity." 
He says : ' ' We may consider ourselves safe against the 
fetich-worship of the poor negroes ; but there are few of 
us, if any, who have not their own fetiches, or their own 
idols, whether in their churches or in their hearts." He 
assures us that no tribe or nation has yet been met with, 
destitute of belief in higher beings than man. 

What you call " the unwortlry conceptions of the condi- 
tion of the spirit after death" attach no more to Spirit- 
ualism than to any other form of belief in a future state. 
An intelligence claiming to be that of a returned spirit, 
being asked if life in the spirit- world was at all analogous 
to life in this, replied: "Somewhat;" and added: "We 
live more in the ideal." Now that we should cany our 
best ideals with us, and be affected thereby, it is perfectly 
rational to suppose, if we are to preserve our identity un- 
impaired, Spiritualism teaches^ that each one gravitates 
where he belongs ; that we reap as we sow ; that the con- 
trolling affections, tastes, and acts of this life affect our 
future condition ; or, in the words of the venerable I. H. 
Fichte, "The future life is a continuation of the present, 
and will be affected by our experiences and our prevailing 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 119 

thoughts and affections here." This you call "an un- 
worthy conception." To my mind it is the worthiest pos- 
sible conception, for the simple reason that it is the most 
consistent, rational, and just, as well as a conception the 
most analogous with our present mental or psychical con- 
stitution. 

The North American Indian's idea of an Elysium is that 
of a grand hunting-ground. Possibly it is just as rational 
as the idea, held by certain Christians, that heaven is a 
place where the elect shall eternally strike golden harps to 
the praise of the Triune Being, or lie on " Immanuel's 
bosom." But it is not a mere conception or erroneous 
speculation that is to largely affect our future condition ; it 
is the real dominant love that we have made a part of our 
innermost nature, and which is likely to cling to us until, 
according to the analogies of this present life, we can, by 
our own force of will and of habit, aided perhaps by influ- 
ences from friendly spirits or from the Fountain of all 
grace and truth, cast it off for something higher and better. 
.For Spiritualism does not hold that the mistakes and evils 
of this life are to be eternally irreparable, or that God is 
the keeper of an everlasting insane asylum. 

You think it " most pernicious" that the " Spiritualistic 
s} T stem" should make men, "of, at the very least, most 
ordinary intellectual and spiritual endowments, the bearers 
of supernatural powers, thereby sealing them as the chosen 
instruments of Providence." 

Ah, my dear sir, it would seem that Providence does not 
alwaj's work according to our poor finite notions of what is 
most fit. We have somewhat higher authority than yours 
or mine for believing that ' ' the foolishness of God is wiser 
than men ; and the weakness of God is stronger than 
men ; " that ' ' God hath chosen the foolish things of the 
world to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen the 
weak things of the world to confound the things which are 



120 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which 
are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are 
not, to bring to naught things that are ; that no flesh 
should glory in his presence." 

You speak of " spiritual endowments," and it is evident 
that you mean by the phrase what we understand by spirit- 
ual-mindedness. If you had acquainted yourself with the 
phenomena before trying to discredit them, you would have 
learned that medial sensitiveness to effects from supposed 
spirits does not depend on the moral or intellectual superi- 
ority of the medium over other men ; that some of the 
most powerful mediums are the least entitled to the credit 
of being ' ' spiritually-minded ; " that they are often per- 
sons as readily swayed by bad influences, by coarse sen- 
sual appetites, as by good and pure, and that the instances 
are rare in which a medium for certain objective phenomena 
is at the same time a philosopher and a saint. 

All this may seem quite wrong to jou and to me. It 
would perhaps be much more convincing if a philosopher 
and man of character like yourself should be selected as 
the instrument of these phenomena, rather than a man 
like Hemy Slade, who knows little or nothing of " Causa- 
tion," or "the Conservation of Energ}'." That such a 
person should be medially endowed, and you, the author 
of '* Axioms of Plrysics," should not be qualified, by the 
development of some occult faculty in your nature, to read 
what is written on a tightly-folded pellet, or to get direct 
writing on a locked slate, is indeed -hard to explain. It 
looks as if Providence were unacquainted with } T our rep- 
utation in Leipzig. How we can reconcile this with the 
attribute of omniscience I do not see any better than you. 

What you call the "materialization of ghosts" is an 
offence to 3 T ou. The phenomenon would seem to be quite 
analogous with that related of Christ, where, after his cru- 
cifixion, he entered the room with closed doors, and showed 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 121 

the wounds in his side to the doubting disciple, just as 
4 ' materializing spirits" now exhibit the personal deformi- 
ties which marked their earthly bodies, — and all for the 
single purpose of identification. That a spirit should have 
such a power over matter as to be able to extemporize a 
visible and palpable simulacrum of an} T part of its earthty 
form, would seem to exalt rather than belittle our concep- 
tion of the power of spirits. Will you explain why the 
Spiritualism that attributes such a conditioned power to a 
finite spirit, is any more i ' grossly materialistic " than the 
theology which ascribes to the Infinite Spirit an uncondi- 
tioned power over all material things ? 

The very fact that the medium cannot command at pleas- 
ure, and for the purpose of gain, the influences through 
which the phenomena take place, is a full explanation of 
the conscious frauds to which he ma}' sometimes resort. 
The medium does not command the spirit ; it is the sup- 
posed spirit, who voluntarily comes to produce certain 
effects which may satisfy the observer that an intelligent 
force, not always animating a visible body> is at work. 

The paramount question, according to 3*onr estimate, is 
not whether the phenomena are real, undeniable facts, 
" divine disclosures," — but whether they are supposed by 
philosophers like yourself to be " prejudicial" to our social 
welfare. Truly this would seem to be an attitude of mind 
hardly favorable to the discussion of the scientific claims of 
Spiritualism. Ought any persistent fact of the cosmos to 
be ignored because, in our human weakness, we ma}' regard 
it as " prejudicial" to some interest of our own? Shall we 
place our own judgment in the matter above that of the 
Author of Nature? " Shall mortal man be more just than 
God ? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker ? " One 
would think that the very possibility of injury from a fact 
of nature ought to incite a generous lover of his race to a 
most thorough investigation. Is it not the glory of real 



122 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

science that it is impartial and neutral ; that it asks not 
whether a phenomenon is "prejudicial" or beneficial, but 
works for the truth, though the heavens fall ? 

You say, "We can leave the question entirely alone" 
whether there is " a ground for belief" in our phenomena. 
These words clearly embody your thought ; and that thought 
is not scientific but Jesuitical. 

Perhaps you will reply, that admitting our phenomena to 
be true, we are not justified in drawing from them the 
inference we do. But what we ask is, not that j t ou shall 
admit our inferences, but our facts. The inferences can 
take care of themselves. But here, too, you would block 
the progress of science. The axioms on which all science 
rests are inferences. In the words of the late Thomas M. 
Herbert, "All science and human life would be impossible 
unless we accepted the deliverance of consciousness when it 

carries us beyond phenomena Science transcends 

phenomena at every step ; the whole fabric of human 
knowledge would collapse, unless the testimoiry of con- 
sciousness was accepted to facts not found amongst phe- 
nomena, but inferred from them'"' 

We are forced every day to accept inferences relating to 
what transcends phenomena, if we are to recognize the past 
history of the world, or an} T thing externally presented to 
us. Phenomena, then, and conceptions derived from them 
— i. e., inferences, — are all that we can know directly, 
and both are but " symbols of inaccessible realities." 

In regard to the direct writing of supposed spirits, you 
remark: "Intellectually the soul falls into a condition 
which, so far as we can conclude from the character of the 
writing upon slates, can only be described as lamentable. 
These writings belong throughout to the domain of higher 
or lower stupidity, chiefly lower — i. e., they are absolutely 
without sense." 

The mischiefs from Spiritualism, like those from witch- 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 123 

craft, arise, as I have already asserted, from a misinter- 
pretation of the facts. The novice, naturally excited by 
the transcendent character of the phenomena, forms an ex- 
aggerated estimate of the wisdom and reliability of those 
who have passed from this into the next stage of being. 
Shakspeare, who was well acquainted with the traditional 
demonology of his day, makes Hamlet at first mistrust the 
spirit he has seen, as one who is abusing him to damn him. 
The doubt was apt and proper. When we have learned to 
regard spirits not as ghastly monstrosities outside of nature, 
but as our human fellow-beings, changed only through their 
relations to a new and untried sphere of life, we may possi- 
bly shake off these injurious misconceptions.) 

One of the great lessons that Spiritualism has to teach, 
is that death makes no instant change in the moral or in- 
tellectual condition of man. The bearings of this knowledge 
on human morality are obvious. The fool will not at once 
become a sage, nor the clown a gentleman, nor the thief an 
honest man. Each will talk, and feel, and act very much 
as he did on earth. 

But your remark as to the direct writings on slates is an 
error. I have had a good deal of experience in them, and 
on no one occasion have I received a message that could be 
called stupid. They have been apt and well-written replies 
to general questions, and though often unsatisfactory in 
withholding clear proofs of identit} 7 , they have frequently 
indicated an intelligence far beyond that of the medium. 
Writings in languages unknown to him are often got. I 
have related elsewhere the experience of Mr. Timayenis, 
the Greek, and of Mr. Giles B. Stebbins. Such instances 
are not unfrequent. There are numerous facts that contra- 
dict the theory that the direct writing comes always from 
the mind of the medium. That it may sometimes be colored 
by medial impressions, is probable. To assert in a general 
way that these pneumatographic communications are " abso- 



124 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

lutely without sense " is a declaration without sense, because 
without truth. Supposing your assertion to be true, how 
would you explain the fact, without classing the mediums 
themselves (to whom, I suppose, you would credit the 
tricks) as belonging to ' ' the domain of higher or lower 
stupidity"? This would be notoriously contrary to the 
truth. 

When communications come indirectly through mediums, 
and signed with the name of some eminent person, it is true 
that they often belie the assumption by the style. The 
theory that there are impostors in the spirit-world as well 
as in this, is consistent with all the facts of pneumatology 
throughout the ages. 

But the intellectual state of the medium may sometimes 
be in fault. Centuries ago Plutarch, who was well acquaint- 
ed with supersensual phenomena, remarked that "the 
greatest number of Apollo's oracles were, in respect both 
to metre and expression, tasteless and full of errors." The 
same remark applies to nearly all the modern medial poetry. 
But Plutarch did not question the spiritual derivation of 
certain oracles because of their faulty st}de. One of the 
characters of the dialogue, in which he discusses the sub- 
ject, is made to say : "Voice and sound, expression and 
metre, do not belong to Apollo, but to the prophetess ; he 
only inspires her with the images and conceptions, and in- 
flames her soul so that it can see the future." 

Some few of the psychographic communications have been 
worthy of the literary powers of a Fenelon, a Channing, or 
even a Wundt. The instances may be rare ; but not more 
so than instances of eminent genius are rare among human 
beings in this life. 

Let me come to the last of your objections. You tell us 
that Spiritualism is a superstition ; and you add : 

" Superstition defies every opposition and attack. Driven 
from one position, it is at once ready in another. It were 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 125 

almost chimerical to hope that science will ever completely 
root it out. Nothing could darken such a hope more than 
the appearance of superstition in scientific circles them- 
selves. Science, striking off one head from the monstrous 
hydra, is obliged to see a new one start out in another 
place, a head which even assumes her own face." 

Now, sir, when you give us to understand that a fact of 
nature ought not to be investigated because it may prove 
"prejudicial" to human welfare, does the superstition lie 
on your side, or on that of those who, reverently believing 
that all the operations of nature have a divine meaning, 
are willing to give their best energies to the investigation 
of the truth ? You warn us off from a scientific study of 
certain phenomena, and in the same breath you tell us that 
Science "must cope with Modern Superstition." 

Cope with it, how ? Unscientifically ? By refusing to in- 
vestigate the grounds of what you call a superstition ? Such 
is the strange inconsistenc}^ suggested by your language ! 
Naj 7 , you go further. You insinuate that well-known phe- 
nomena, which have not been scientifically discredited after 
thhly-three years of testing, though quite inexplicable 
to 3 T ourself, will probably turn out to be mere juggling 
tricks. You bring against a well- tested medium charges 
of mendacity and imposture, founded wholly on an igno- 
rance of the history and nature of medial manifestations. 
Upon the good faith of the " court-artist," Bellachini, you 
cast an aspersion because he manfully confessed he could 
detect no sleight-of-hand trick in the phenomena through 
Slade. 

Before you. can rule out Spiritualism as a non-scientific 
question, you must prove that our two basic facts of clair- 
voyance and direct writing are not established. This it is 
impossible for you to do. You yourself have confessed 
your inabilitjr to explain them, and your suggestion of 
jugglery is merely the exploded superstition of the last 



126 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

thirty-three years. There is now daily testimony of the 
most unimpeachable kind to the occurrence of these phe- 
nomena under various conditions, and in various forms. 
While I write this paragraph, I take up a paper that came 
to me b} T mail an hour ago, and find in it a communication 
from Mr. S. B. Nichols, of 467 Waverly Avenue, Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., a careful observer and a gentleman long known 
to me b} T reputation, in which he tells us of his visit, July 
14, 1880, to Mr. A. Phillips, at 133 East 36th Street, 
New York city. "I found," he saj^s, "a young man of 
some twenty -five summers, prepossessing in appearance, 
who said that he could guarantee nothing. Sometimes 
there were failures under the best conditions. I did not 
make myself known, and he had no means of knowing 
whether I was a believer or a skeptic." 

Mr. Nichols got the direct writing several times on clean 
slates, and, as Guldenstubbe did on paper, without the use 
of a pencil. He says: "The medium did not touch the 
slates after they had been placed in position. When the 
raps were heard, I opened the slates and found written upon 
one of them in a legible hand : ' No doubt 3-ou think this 
easily accomplished. You just try it, and you will find out.' " 

Mr. Nichols bought two large slates of his own, and of 
the experiment with these he sa} T s : 

" I placed my own double slate on the shelf to the table ; 
also the medium's small slates on the top of mine. On my 
own slate was written, 'If 3'ou were alone, we can come. 
James.' On the small slates was written, ' If you will sit 
alone for a little while each evening, we will make ourselves 
manifest. I am Martha.' 

"I next put a clean, whole sheet of commercial note- 
paper between my own slates, and put it on the shelf to 
the table, and my foot upon it. While the writiDg was 
being done I could feel the vibrations distinctly on the 
inside of this sheet of paper, without pencil crumb, or any- 
thing that could scratch or make a mark. On the paper or 
slates was written : 



SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 127 

" 'Would that I had the power to give you further evi- 
dences. James Nichols.' 

" During these various experiments, the medium was 
walking about the room, and did not touch my slates unless 
in my presence, and then onty casually. Three of the 
names were of persons who once lived here in this mortal 
life, and have passed to the other world. If this writing 
was not produced by a conscious individuality disembodied, 
whence the power? And whence the individuality?" 

Scarcely had I read the above account, than, turning to 
another column of the paper, I read the following state- 
ment bj T a writer (not a Spiritualist) , taken from the Den- 
ver (Colorado) Daily News of July, 1880. The genuine- 
ness of the phenomena through Mrs. A. R. Simpson, to 
whom he refers r had been previously tested repeatedly by 
personal friends of my own in Chicago : 

"Mrs. Simpson handed two slates to the reporter, also 
a needle and some thread, then leaving the room, requested 
him to sew the two slates together through the binding on 
the border. This was done effectually, the two slates being 
securely sewed together, and the outsides marked to show 
that they could not possibly be separated without the fact 
being known. After a few seconds, during which the 
writer never let go of the slates, he was requested to cut 
them apart. When this was clone, writing was found upon 
the inside slate, in answer to a question that had been put 
in the usual way, by writing, and folding it up in a paper." 

In this double experiment there was manifested not only 
direct writing, but the power of reading what was written 
on a paper, folded so that by no means known to physical 
science could it be read. Here was a double guaranty of 
genuineness. Nothing could have been written beforehand 
by some occult chemical means on the slate ; for the writ- 
ing was in answer to a question written on the spot \>j the 
sitter, and the paper was folded so that no writing on it 
could be read by human eyesight. The Clairvoyance was 
proved \>y the answer on the slate, and the direct writing 



128 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

was proved not only by the conditions, but by its being in 
reply to what was contained in a paper not yet unfolded. 

The San Francisco Sunday Chronicle of September, 1879, 
sa\ T s that Mrs. E. W. Lennett, at 817 Bush Street, in that 
city, is a remarkable medium for independent slate- writing. 
It tells us that a skeptic recentlj* took to her a covered, 
double slate, joined by hinges, put on one of the inside 
surfaces, with his own hand, a bit of slate-pencil, folded 
the slates together, and held them with both hands. The 
medium, without even stopping the conversation in which 
she was engaged, also took hold of the slate with one 
hand, and immediately the pencil could be heard scratching 
over the surface of the slate within. When the pencil 
ceased, and the slate was opened, the entire side of one 
slate was filled with writing in a plain, bold hand, in Eng- 
lish, while the other was partially filled with writing in 
French, a language the medium is entirely unacquainted 
with, but which the gentleman in question thoroughly un- 
derstood. As a still farther test, the medium gave him 
the slate to hold in his own hands, without her being in 
contact with it in any way, when the result was the same as 
before, the slate being filled with writing. 

Will 3'ou sa} T that all this host of witnesses are fooled, 
or that the}' lie ? A simple experiment of your own would 
soon prove to you that you were in just the same predica- 
ment — for your honest}?- would force you, in spite of j-our 
bitter prejudices, to testify to the truth. 

Spiritualism, even if true, j t ou think ought to be dis- 
missed from scientific consideration as immoral in its ten- 
dency. It is not necessar}^ for me here to discuss the 
question, whether Spiritualism, being a cosmical fact, is 
moral or not in its tendency. I should as soon think of 
questioning the morality of the interstellar ether, or of the 
principle of gravitation. " Truth before all things," 
should be the motto of the man of science. Yet your 






SPIRITUALISM AS A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. 129 

objection, impertinent as it is, is a common one ; and we 
often hear the question put in regard to Spiritualism, 
"What is the use of it?" 

The questions, "What is the use of the human race?" 
' l What is the use of the universe ? " would be quite as 
much to the purpose. If falsehood and depravity are 
manifested by spirits, so they are b} T the whole human 
family. If incitements to evil come from the spirit- world, 
so they do from this. The only question for science to 
settle is, Do these claimed phenomena occur? And in 
failing to place this as the scientific limit to your argument, 
you show that you are an untrustworthy guide on a subject 
which } t ou affect to treat from the scientific point of view. 

If our phenomena are destined to change the notions of 
scientific men as to the constitution of matter, or as to a 
seeming infraction of laws which may be subject to a hith- 
erto unrecognized spiritual law, then you must accommo- 
date your notions to the facts, and not think to get rid of 
the latter by crying out against them as interruptions of 
the sequences of nature. 

If these apparent interruptions are permitted by the 
great Orderer, let us summon the faith that will enable us 
to see in them a dispensation nothing less than divine. No 
matter how low, how distasteful, or how apparently im- 
moral they may seem to our finite and unprepared minds, 
let us be sure they mean something for our good which it is 
our business to find out, however difficult the. problem may 
seem at first. It is the absence of a wise faith in God and 
nature, which prompts these despairing cries of a violation 
of natural law, or of a loosening of moral restrictions. 
Order and law jprevail in all that may seem chaotic to your 
distorted view of the spirit-world ; and your fears that all 
is going to the bad, if Spiritualism is allowed to vindicate 
its claims to scientific attention, are chimerical and gratui- 
tous, if not blasphemous. 
9 



130 REPLY TO WUNDT. 

The aim of the philosophy of Ulrici is "to demonstrate 
on the basis of facts that to the soul, in contradistinction 
to nature, not simply independent existence, but also the 
supremacy belongs, both of right and in fact." Can you 
wonder then that he welcomed the facts of Spiritualism, 
and, seeing the gravity of the testimony, asked for it a 
scientific investigation ? 

" The testimony, " says Challis, Professor of Astronomy, 
Cambridge, England, "has been so abundant and consen- 
taneous, that either the facts must be admitted to be such 
as are reported, or the possibility of certifying facts by 
human testimony must be given up." 

Your easy cry of jugglery has been doing service ever 
since 1847. Bellachini, Houdin, Hamilton, Hermann, Ja- 
cobs,* Rh} T s, and other eminent professors of the con- 
juring art, have declared that medial phenomena are not 
explicable by the theory of prestidigitation ; yet you fall 
back on it as if it were your only way of retreat from the 
Spiritual theor} 7 . Wiry not employ your great abilities, 
your learning, and your meditative powers in bringing for- 
ward some other theory in explanation, which msiy at least 
have the merit of novelty and of reason? If you will do 
it, you will do what the sages of all the centuries have 
been unable to accomplish. Let this be an incentive to 
your ambition. 

* Jacobs, a well-known German professor, says (1880), that, after having thor- 
oughly examined what are termed Spiritual phenomena, he can declare — 
though he can imitate a great many of the more startling exhibitions of power 
accorded us by the disembodied— that what he is enabled to do as a sleight-of 
hand performer " has nothing in common with Spiritualism." 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 131 



CHAPTER IV. 

CLAIRVOYANCE A SPIRITUAL FACULTY. — TRANCE-SPEAKING. 

UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS OF SPECIALISTS IN SCIENCE. 

MORE TESTIMONY. 

We are told that the Spiritualist is the victim of an illu- 
sion ; that he has none of the ' ' wariness " becoming the 
scientific mind ; that he ' ' seeks for comfort at the expense 
of truth ; " that " sentiment and imagination have made that 
true to him which is not true ; whereas the spirit of science 
is that attitude of mind which abhors delusion as the most 
colossal of errors." 

It is only the self-complacency of ignorance that could 
invent such objections. Imagine men like Zollner and his 
professional associates, all trained and accomplished physi- 
cists, watching the movements of a glass bell under the 
table, and being so deficient in " wariness" as to testify to 
seeing what thej did not see, and to hearing what they did 
not hear, and to touching what they did not touch ! 

"It is from no dread of annihilation," says Alfred R. 
Wallace, "that I have gone into this subject of Spiritual- 
ism. I came to the inquiry utterly unbiased by hopes or 
fears, because I knew that my belief could not affect the 
reality, and with an ingrained prejudice against even such 
a word as spirit, which I have hardly jet overcome." 

Dr. John Elliotson, F.R.S., one of the most scientific of 
English physicians, and for several years editor of The 
Zoist in London, had advocated extreme Sadducean and 
materialistic views almost to the end of his life, although he 



132 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

was well acquainted with some of the lower phenomena of 
mesmerism. One little proof of supersensual power which 
he got through D. D. Home, in France, wholly revolution- 
ized his opinions, and he became an earnest Spiritualist. 

In the year 1868, in company with my friend, Wm. White, 
of London, author of a candid Life of Swedenborg, I called 
on Elliot-son's friend and colleague, Dr. Ashburner, at the 
house of the latter in London, opposite Hyde Park Gate. 
He had been one of the Queens physicians. He described 
to me in touching terms the softening effects upon Elliot- 
son's character of his new convictions. Ashburner is the 
author of some remarkable works, giving his experiences in 
Spiritualism. I found him, though blind, serenely happy 
in his old age in the possession of a great, inspiring truth, 
of which he had satisfied himself fully. 

J. F. Deleuze, the experienced student of mesmerism 
and somnambulism, says that the power of seeing at a dis- 
tance, prevision, the communication of thought without the 
aid of external signs, are sufficient proofs of the spirituality 
of the soul. He marvels at the materialism of Dr. Georget, 
who had acquainted himself with some of the phenomena. 
Georget was the author of the much-esteemed " Physiology 
of the Nervous System " (1821) , in which extreme material- 
istic views were maintained. But the transcendent facts of 
somnambulism came fast and thick, and fairly wrested from 
him his materialism. Iu his last will and testament he 
solemnly says, referring to the above-named volume from 
his pen : 

" This work had scarcely appeared, when renewed medi- 
tations on a very extraordinaiy phenomenon, somnam- 
bulism, no longer permitted me to entertain doubts of the 
existence within us, and external to us, of an intelligent 
principle, altogether different from material existences : in 
a word, of the soul and God. With respect to this I have 
a profound conviction, founded upon facts which I believe 
to be incontestable. This declaration will not see the light 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 133 

till a period when its sincerity will not be doubted, nor my 
intentions suspected. As I cannot publish it myself, I 
request those persons who may read it, on opening this will, 
that is to sa} T , after my death, to give it all possible 
publicity." 

Georget will probably be set aside by our opponents as a 
man who got his convictions " by suppressing the skeptical 
intellect, not b} T satisfying it." Having first manifested his 
sincerity in his skeptical utterances, he will be charged with 
insincerhrv or incompetence in frankly admitting that new 
facts had convinced him of his error. 

And what is this clairvoyance to which Georget refers ? 
In its connection with mesmeric somnambulism, it was first 
announced b} 7 Puysegur in 1784. As far as I have ad- 
mitted it as part of a scientific basis, it is the exercise of 
the supersensual faculty of penetrating opaque and dense 
matter as if by the faculty of sight. But it does more. It 
detects our unutterecl, undeveloped thoughts ; it goes back 
along the past, and describes what is hidden ; nay, the 
proofs are overwhelming that it may pierce the future, and 
predict coming events from the shadows they cast before. 

What is it that sees without the physical eyes, and without 
the assistance of light? What is normal sight? It is not 
the vibrating ether — it is not the external eye — that sees. 
It is the soul using the eye as an instrument, and the light 
as a condition. Prove once that sight can exist without 
the use of light, sensation, or any plxysieal organ of vision, 
and you prove an abnormal, supersensual, spiritual faculty ; 
— a proof which puts an end to the theory of materialism, 
and which, through its affinity with analogous or corres- 
ponding facts, justifies its introduction as part of a scientific 
basis for the spiritual theory. 

"Thus it is," says Mr. R. H. Brown, (1868,) "that 
clairvoyance furnishes the most conclusive answer to the 
materialists, and presents the most satisfactory proof of 



134 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

the existence of the soul, separate from the body ; — resid- 
ing within it, generally employing its organs for the recep- 
tion of ideas, but at times acting independently of those 
organs, and obtaining information without their aid. By 
clairvoyance we thus show the truth of the first proposition 
upon which Spiritualism rests, — the existence of a dual 
nature in man, a soul as well as a body." 

The same writer proceeds to argue, that if the mind sees 
without the aid of light or of the optic nerve, it must have 
some other medium by which the simple impression of sight 
can be individualized, and presented distinct and separate 
from all other impressions ; there must be a spiritual organ 
of sight besides a physical. And if there is a spiritual 
organ of sight, there must also be a spiritual organ for the 
individualization of all the other impressions. In nature, 
each part is adapted to all the other parts, and the exist- 
ence of one part presupposes the existence of all the other 
parts. If there is a spiritual organ of sight, there must also 
be a complete spiritual organization or body, interfused 
with and permeating the physical body. And this is what 
Spiritualism asserts. 

u Nature, our wise and powerful mother, fore-adapts 
everything for the conditions amid which she intends it 
shall live. How shall we escape the conclusion, that by 
adapting the soul to another state of being, and endowing 
it for that purpose with the power to exist, act, think, see, 
and hear, without the aid of the body, and separated from 
it, Nature has given us her solemn and sacred guaranty 
that we shall live hereafter ? " 

There are some, even among those called scientific, who 
are so blinded by theories as to be impervious to facts. 
Even among Spiritualists there are those who would under- 
value the importance of our objective phenomena. But all 
the great advances in human invention and discovery have 
been made through attention to facts ; — and some of them 






UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 135 

facts as humble as the falling of an apple, or the swinging 
of a lamp. To undervalue the slightest manifestation from 
a spiritual source is a folly, no matter whether it be a simple 
rap, or a message written by some force unknown. Even 
if it only discloses to us the frivolity of the manifesting 
agent, it is knowledge gained. I confess that a simple, 
flawless experiment in direct writing is to me more impressive 
than all the speculative discourses by so-called trance- 
speakers, in which no objective, scientific proof is given of 
preterhuman power. 

In this I do not disparage the trance-speaker. There is 
place for him, too ; and when the influence impelling him 
is that of wisdom and reason, I can listen to him with profit. 
But it is often impossible to distinguish between what 
comes from the occult powers, the unconscious reminis- 
cences, of the trance-speaker himself, and that which may 
come from some prompting spirit. The flowery fluency of 
a trance-speaker must not be taken as a proof of power ; 
rather is it an evidence of weakness. Even granting that 
such mediums speak from some foreign spirit's inspiration, 
that spirit may be inferior to many a mortal in sound judg- 
ment and intelligence. The spirits that assume great 
names, and influence the medium to talk in a style that 
revolts our sense of truth, of good taste, and of identity, 
must be brought to the bar of our highest reason, and 
judged by its verdict. That spirits, as well as mortals, may 
deceive ; that they may be influenced by vanity or ambition , 
and may afflict us by verbose twaddle, is one of the facts 
which Modern Spiritualism daily discloses ; and in this it is 
doing good service, if we only have the wit to see it : for 
the fact explodes some ancient and respectable errors in 
regard to the spirit- world. 

The absence of these considerations leads to deplorable 
credulities. That spirits may sometimes play gross hoaxes 
on unsuspecting mortals, is made probable b} r the history 



136 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

of fanaticism in all ages, and our modern experiences go 
far to confirm it as a fact. Hemy More, (1614-1687,) the 
Platonic philosopher and learned Spiritualist, who was him- 
self a medium for certain physical phenomena, once re- 
marked : ' ' There are as great fools in the spirit-world as 
there ever were in this." Of the spirits that came through 
Madame Hauffe, the " Seeress of Prevorst," Dr. Kerner 
(1826) relates that some of them were "foolish and trifling," 
and some ' ' much poorer and more destitute than spirits in 
this life ever showed themselves ; " and he remarks of this 
seemingly undivine order of things, " What I here in the 
dust, with the eye of a mole, regard as so great a dishar- 
mony, will hereafter, when the scales fall from my mole's- 
eye, appear as harmony." 

The importance attached to the utterances of ' ' trance- 
speakers " by uncritical or inexperienced Spiritualists, has 
justly excited the ridicule of those who detect in mere 
prolixity and florid verbiage very human failings. Where 
the utterance or the knowledge can be fairly hypothecated 
as coming from the medium, exercising abnormal powers, 
the idea of the intervention of a foreign spirit ought to be 
dismissed. 

In a discourse delivered in London, July 11, 1880, by 
Mrs. Richmond, the gifted American "trance-speaker," I 
find this remark: "To say, therefore, there has been an 
accurate scientific basis of Spiritualism, is to say that which 
is impossible." Here is an assertion which our facts plainly 
contradict, and which the so-called ' ' controls " themselves 
of Mrs. Richmond contradict in other parts of their dis- 
course. 

If the facts of clairvoyance and direct writing have really 
occurred, and are reproducible, are they not as much facts 
of science as the neutralization of an acid by an alkali, or 
the appearance of the aurora borealis ? 

" Spiritualism," say these so-called controls, " cannot be 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 137 

a science. It is more than science ; it is beyond human 
comprehension in the physical sense. It is that which, 
demonstrating its presence to the senses, leaves the knowledge 
of its methods entirely outside the human senses." 

Are there not other facts of nature besides Spiritualism, 
which, " demonstrating their presence to the senses, leave 
the knowledge of their methods entirely outside the human 
senses ? " Does not crystallography do the same ? Do we 
yet know the " methods " by which comets and the aurora 
borealis come into existence ? Must not a fact that ' ' de- 
monstrates its presence to the senses" possess the first 
great essential of a fact of science, however ignorant we 
may remain as to all its methods and causes? See how 
loosely these ' ' controls " contradict themselves ! In one 
sentence we are told, "That which you chiefly have to 
mind is to know that you have the truth." In another 
sentence these same ' ' controls " assert in regard to spiritual 
phenomena, " The ver} T testimony upon which you seek to 
establish a truth evades you in an hour, and the very evi- 
dence that you were prepared to swear by has the next 
moment turned against you." 

What shall we say to an unreasoned generalization like 
this? If it were true, there would be no tenable truth in 
Spiritualism. We should have to keep abandoning our 
facts as fast as they were grasped. Is there any person 
who, once having come intelligently into possession of our 
facts, has been known to deny them ? The construction put 
on them may vary ; but the facts themselves, once thor- 
oughly tested, are the mind's inalienable acquisition. How 
will the following passage from the same discourse bear the 
probe of critical analysis ? 

' ' There has been test after test ; there have been evi- 
dences piled mountains high, but these are immeasurably 
greater than science." (That is, too great to be known!) 
' ' They are immeasurably beyond the scope of scientific 



138 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

thought to-day ; the} r are immeasurably beyond the reach 
and grasp of any human school of thought," (Are not many 
admitted facts beyond human explanation ?) ' ' and must 
belong forever to that region of super-science upon which 
the truths are founded, and for which they builded their 
strongholds. If we trust to science to demonstrate Spirit- 
ualism it will pass away to-morrow," (Then let it pass !) 
' ' and be enrolled among the failures of each succeeding 
age. If we trust to the scientific man, he will catalogue it 
his own way, place it where he chooses in his laboratory — 
a manifestation without a letter, body without spirit, a law 
without a source of existence — it will become one of the 
phenomenal phases of the universe, which the scientific 
world to-day declares is without an intelligent source of 
being." 

"If we trust to the scientific man ! " But the scientific 
man is in this case the individual Spiritualist himself, who 
has studied certain phenomena, objective and subjective, 
till they are to him facts of science, of which he is as well 
assured as of any fact in hydraulics or in chemist^. Has 
not Spiritualism won its millions without the aid of scien- 
tific specialists in other branches ? 

Immediately after the paragraph last quoted, as if the 
" controls" were fooling their medium, and compelling her 
unconsciously to keep confuting their words, they say : 

"It (Spiritualism) has a source of being, spiritual and 
intelligent. Its methods are also working its way to hu- 
manhvv, according to their needs and condition ; it mani- 
fests itself through the senses, because you require it. To 
those who have spiritual vision, it speaks in the spirit ; to 
those who have the power of inspiration, there is no need 
of outward sign and token. But to the dumb and dull 
human sense, thejr must needs have a sign and token. It 
breaks through the barriers, the material walls that sur- 
round j'ou, and sa3 T s, ' If you will have the physical voice, 
here it is ; if you will have the physical hand, here it is.'" 

Having been told that Spiritualism "manifests itself 
through the senses " because we require it ; and also that 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 139 

what we ' ' chiefly have to mind is to know " that we ' ' have 
the truth," — by what logical consequence are we debarred 
from proving the truth by all the tests that science (which 
is knowledge) can apply ? 

I could go further in exposing the inconsistencies of this 
crude and shallow, though ludicrously oracular discourse ; 
but the game is hardly worth the candle. What I have 
said I mean as no reflection on the lady medium herself, 
who is undoubtedly a person of rare ability : my criticism 
applies to the " controls," under whose influence she would 
sometimes seem to speak. That she has often, while be- 
lieving herself to be controlled, spoken wisely and well I 
do not doubt. But she must know that there is hardly a 
prominent investigator at this time who has not committed 
himself to the demonstrable and scientific character of 
some, at least, of our phenomena. 

Who is the scientific expert ? There is no one who can 
be a master of all the sciences. In order to partially ac- 
quaint himself with only one or two, he must give the best 
part of his life to study. The scientific expert in regard 
to elements and their compounds is the chemist ; and so 
the scientific expert in regard to the subtile phenomena of 
Spiritualism is the man who has given the most thought, 
time, and intelligence to the study of them, — who has 
corrected the most mistakes in his experience, and revised 
hasty conclusions the most thoroughly. 

The conscious-automaton theoiy of Huxley, Clifford, and 
others, who affect the tone of extreme science, is that the 
mind is pure mechanism ; that thoughts follow one another 
in a certain order ; that feeling is not to be taken into the 
account : to which Professor James replies : 

" Many persons nowadays seem to think that an}? - con- 
clusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of 
it are all derived from the twitching of frogs' legs, — espe- 
cially if the frogs are decapitated, — and that on the other 



140 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

hand ar^ doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of 
human beings, with heads on their shoulders, must be be- 
nighted and superstitious. They seem to think, too, that 
any vagary or whim, however unverified, of a scientific 
man must needs form an integral part of science itself; 
that when Huxle} T , for example, has ruled feeling out of the 
game of life, and called it a mere bystander, a supernu- 
merary, the matter is settled." 

This eager deglutition of everything materialistic as pe- 
culiar^ scientific is deplorable indeed. The truth is that 
the deductions from science, and from all that relates to 
the functions of the human mind, are alike the results of 
our thinking upon the phenomena which life and nature 
present. No mode • of thinking, except false, illogical 
thinking, can be in conflict with genuine science and its 
teachings. 

Professor Tyndall, who, in spite of his attempts to de- 
fame the subject, seems to be at heart a good Spiritualist, 
has favored us with an account of his investigations into 
our facts. It appears that at a certain seance, a lady said 
that the introduction of a magnet would make her terribly 
ill, and that she would instantly know of the presence of 
one on entering a room. The ingenious professor had 
brought with him. a magnet in his pocket ; and yet the lad} T 
owned that she was particularly well. Ergo, all this testi- 
mony by Wallace, Crookes, Zollner, and the rest of us, is 
disproved, and Spiritualism must be dismissed as nothing 
but ' ' intellectual whoredom ! " 

Again : Professor Tjaidall had a seance with a certain 
" warm-hearted old gentleman," who imagined that a table 
was moved by spirits, when all the while Tyndall himself 
was causing it to vibrate. "Believing," he says, "that 
the disclosure of the secret would provoke anger, I kept it 
to m3 r self." So it would seem that the " warm-hearted -old 
gentleman " took it for granted that the eminent physicist 
was as honorable and sincere as he was himself in the in- 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 141 

vestigation : surely a not unpardonable delusion, and one 
no more a proof of the old gentleman's imbecility than if 
he had accepted a spurious guinea from Mr. Tyndall, sup- 
posing it to be genuine. 

Such experiences have about as much force against Spir- 
itualism as they have against the solar system. And yet 
the rest of the incidents related by Tyndall as proofs of 
the thorough manner in which he has clone Spiritualism, 
are of no higher importance. Felicitating himself upon 
the issue of his vast expenditure of sagacity and labor in 
investigating the question whether there are scientific 
proofs of spiritual activity, his self-complacent comment 
is: "This, then, is the result of an attempt, made by a 
scientific man, to look into the spiritual phenomena ! " I 
will resist the temptation of any animadversion. 

Far different is the temper in which William Crookes, the 
chemist, approaches the subject. After referring (1876) to 
the modern phenomena as ' ' occurring to an almost unpre- 
cedented extent," he remarks : " That a hitherto unrecog- 
nized form of Force exists — whether it be called psychic 
force or X force is of little consequence — is not with me 
a matter of opinion, but of absolute knowledge ; but the 
nature of that force, or the cause which immediately ex- 
cites its activity, forms a subject on which I do not at 
present feel competent to offer an opinion." 

Such is the wary conclusion of an accomplished man of 
science who has tested the phenomena laboriously with the 
aid of an apparatus proper for the work. Mr. Crookes is 
the discoverer of the new metal, thallium ; also of the 
supra-gaseous state in which matter exists in high vacua ; 
and is the deviser of the radiometer. He edits the London 
Quarterly Journal of Science. 

"'The conditions are such as to render exact results im- 
possible," says an objector. The remark is directly con- 
futed by the experiments of Hare, Crookes, Varley, Bout- 
lerof, Zollner, Wallace, Cox, Wyld, W. H. Harrison, 



142 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

* 

Denslow, Ashburner, and more than a hundred more inves- 
tigators known to science. Any man may obtain ' ' exact 
results " who will take the trouble to investigate the subject 
patiently and repeatedly in the presence of tested mediums. 
Mr. F. L. H. Willis, a gentleman well known to me, 
was suspended (1857) from the divinity school of Harvard 
University on a charge of simulating so-called spiritual 
phenomena. The character of these in his presence was 
then patiently examined into by Thomas Wentworth Hig- 
ginson, well known both in England and America as an 
accomplished gentleman and scholar, and who tested cer- 
tain facts to his entire satisfaction. His feet, without the 
shoes, were grasped by palpable hands ; the guitar was 
played on u accurately and gracefully," while he sang sev- 
eral songs, he first placing the guitar "in such a position 
as to guard the instrument from possibility of contact," 
and it being ' ' beyond the reach of any part of Mr. Willis's 
person." Mr. Higginson, in his affidavit, remarks: "I 
cannot pla} T the guitar, but I have heard it played a good 
deal, and I know that the accompaniment was an extraor- 
dinary thing, apart from the mystery of its origin." He 
saj's, in conclusion : 

' ' The question of the ' spiritual origin ' is not now 
raised ; it is a simple question of fraud or genuineness. If 
I have not satisfactory evidence of the genuineness of these 
phenomena, which I have just described, then there is no 
such thing as evidence, and all the fabric of natural science 
may be a mass of imposture. And when I find, on exami- 
nation, that facts similar to these have been observed by 
hundreds of intelligent persons, in various places, for sev- 
eral 3 T ears back, I am disposed humbly to remember the 
maxim, attributed to Arago, 4 He is a rash man who, out- 
side of pure mathematics, pronounces the word impossible. y 
"Thos. Wentworth Higginson." 

"Worcester, ss., April 15, 1857. Subscribed and sworn 
to before me. 

"Henry Chapin, Justice of the Peace." 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 143 

Automatic writing and direct spirit-writing occurred in 
Mr. Willis's presence ; and several times there was an ap- 
port of beautiful and fragrant flowers, under conditions 
which are fully explained in the life of Mr. Willis (Banner 
of Light, June 7, 1879). 

After being fully warned as to the impossible and there- 
fore delusive character of the phenomena ; after having the 
imaginary sources of the delusion pointed out ; knowing, 
too, that all the prejudices of the age and the whole tone 
of educated thought, are arrayed against the reality of 
such facts, — we yet see that the conviction of their gen- 
uineness is forced every day upon such scientific men as 
can rise above the prejudices of their fellows, and venture 
to investigate an ill-reputed truth. And there is not as 
yet a known instance wherein an investigator of any char- 
acter or authority has changed his opinion as to the unex- 
plained occurrence of our phenomena. To attribute such 
convictions to " a diseased faculty of wonder," is simply 
to mock at the. intellectual integrity of the witnesses, 
among whom are hundreds of eminent men, whose testi- 
mony on any other subject would be accepted without 
question. 

" It must be remembered," says Alfred E. Wallace,* the 
well-known naturalist, " that we have to consider, not ab- 
surd beliefs or false influences, but plain matters of fact ; 
and it never has been proved, and cannot be proved, that 
any large amount of cumulative evidence of disinterested 
and sensible men was ever obtained for an absolute and 
entire delusion." 

He further says: "I maintain that human testimony 
increases in value in such an enormous ratio with each 
additional independent and honest witness, that no fact 

* Born in Ulsk, Monmouthshire, in 1822, Mr. Wallace shares with Darwin the 
honor of originating the doctrine of natural selection. He is one of the most 
eminent naturalists of the day; and the author of " On Miracles and Modem 
Spiritualism: Three Essays. London, James Burns, 1875." 



144 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

ought to be rejected when attested by such a body of evi- 
dence as exists for many of the events termed miraculous 
or supernatural, and which occur now daily among us." 

"When Spiritualism," we are told, "will submit to realty 
scientific investigation, it will undoubtedly receive it." 
The reply is, that it has so submitted, and so received it. 
It has submitted openly, repeatedly, in broad daylight, 
where eveiy condition that the investigator could reason- 
ably ask has been granted. Scientific witnesses enough to 
establish its truth forever have testified to the reality of 
its phenomena. It has come out triumphant from the or- 
deal ; and no scoffs of so-called scientific journals, no lead- 
ing articles, however clever and sarcastic, can now affect 
the impregnable basis of pure science on which it rests. 

Darius Lyman, of Washington, D. C, gives some apt 
illustrations of the capacity of pseudo-science, not to know 
when she is not in the humor : 

"If, for example, upon a slate, writing should be pro- 
duced hundreds of times, under circumstances absolutely 
precluding any chemical processes, or any mechanical agency 
other than of a common pencil, that fact would not in the 
estimate of science be sufficient to justify the inference that 
a person in intangible presence had produced the writing. 

" If a table suspended in mid-air were made to yield 
intelligible movements in the presence of persons having no 
agencj' in the motion, and without the intervention of mech- 
anism appreciable by an}' ordinary buman sense, that fact 
would not warrant the inference of the presence of an in- 
tangible person aiding in the suspension. 

" If a well-known tune were played on a piano without 
the intervention of any mechanism distinct from the instru- 
ment, or of any automatic appliances, or the contact of any 
object of sufficient consistency to be at once visible and 
tangible, science could not justify the inference that an 
intangible person did the playing. 

"If three persons, the solo occupants of the same 
chamber and the same house, none of them ventriloquists, 
should, in such chamber and house converse with an audi- 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 145 

ble voice addressed to all, and if the voice should commu- 
nicate to each one facts known only to each, that fact, 
according to science, would not justify the conclusion that 
the voice proceeded from a person who lacked the attribute 
of a tangible body, and was not one of the three. 

"These supposed illustrations exhibit the attitude of 
science to the alleged facts of Spiritualism, as understood 
by Professor Youmans and Dr. Carpenter. No amount of 
testimony is adequate to verify the alleged facts ; no logic 
known to science is sufficient to warrant an inference from 
any facts of the existence or intervention of spirits, or the 
reality of any supersensual world ! 

' ' The behavior of the loadstone is thought by scientific 
men to warrant the inference of a magnetic force ; a stroke 
from the Leyden jar indubitably proves the presence of an 
electric force ; the fall of an apple establishes the reality of 
the force of gravity. Yet no human sense can directly 
cognize any one of these forces. They are simply inferred 
from motions of bodies. They belong entirely to the super- 
sensual world. Because they are impersonal, though 
strictly supersensual, science can manage to put on them 
the seal of its approval. 

"But other forces equally supersensual, revealed like 
gravity and magnetism in insulated cases of the disturbance 
of the state of solid substances, science cannot recognize, 
because they are personal, and reveal human intelligence 
and affection existing in modes hitherto undreamed of. 
There is danger, probably, if science recognizes any such 
forces upon any testimony, that man may be discovered to 
be capable of surviving death ! " 

Mr. John Fiske, the distinguished cosmic philosopher, 
stigmatizes as "totemism" the spiritual belief of such per- 
sons as Franz Hoffman, editor of Baader's philosophical 
works, Immanuel H. Fichte, son of Kant's great contem- 
porary, Alfred R. Wallace, Frederic Tennyson, Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning, and not a few others, reputed as clever 
in their way. Mr. Fiske makes a somewhat elaborate 
attempt to console us for the absence of all rational proofs 
of an hereafter, by considerations which I will leave it for 
10 



146 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

my friend, Mr. Lyman, to set forth with his happy combi- 
nation of science and wit : 

" Mr. Fiske flatters the man of science with an attempted 
proof that no proper spiritual world can be an object of 
knowledge ; and seeming to feel that such an argument 
might possibly be too much for the theologian to accept 
without grimaces, he soothes the latter with arguments 
tending to reconcile him to a spiritual world according to 
the taste of savans, by showing the strong probabilities in 
favor of its reality arising from the consideration that a 
scintilla of actual light can never come from it." 

' ' The upshot of the whole is : That if there is a spiritual 
world it is absolutely divorced from matter, and there is no 
bridge to it for human thought ; and secondly, we cannot 
even imagine souls except in a sort of physical organism 
(with which, of course, they have ' no community of 
nature') ; and thirdly, if they exist after death, there is, 
therefore, no possible means of our knowing it in this life. 
The critic does not enunciate these several propositions, 
but they underlie his charming rhetoric and logic. 

" The comfort afforded to the theologian is not very 
great ; but after he has secured a spiritual world incom- 
municably separate from this, he ought to be thankful for 
small additional favors. He is saved from the clutches of 
science in this way : Though a spiritual world must be ut- 
terly divorced from all effective connection with this, and is 
even inconceivable, that inconceivability is no proof of its 
unreality. For be it known to the doctors of theology, 
that (p. 48)— 

" ' Since our inability to conceive anything is limited by the extent 
of our experience, and since human experience is very far from being 
infinite, it follows that there may be, and in all probability is, (!) 
an immense region of existence in every way as real as the region 
which we know, yet concerning which we cannot form the faintest 
rudiment of a conception.' [Is not this the proper domain of faith?] 
' Any hypothesis relating to such a region of existence is not only 
disproved by the total failure of evidence in its favor, but the total 
failure of evidence in its favor does not raise even the slightest primcb 
facie presumption against its validity.' 

4 'And let the theological doctor take notice, that ' These 
considerations apply with great force to the hypothesis of a 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 147 

world in which psychical phenomena persist in the absence 
of material conditions.' And let him further observe, that 
4 It is true on the one hand, that we can bring up no scien- 
tific evidence in support of such an hypothesis. But on 
the other hand, it is equally true that in the very nature of 
things no such evidence could be expected to be forth- 
coming: even were there such evidence in abundance, it 
could not be accessible to us. The existence of a single 
soul, or congeries of psychical phenomena, unaccompanied 
by a material body, would be evidence sufficient to demon- 
strate the hypothesis. But in the nature of things, even 
were there a million such souls round about us, we could 
not become aware of the existence of one of them, for we 
have no organ or faculty for the perception of soul apart 
from the material structure and activities in which it has 
been manifested throughout the whole course of our expe- 
rience/ 

" So the theologian can understand that the strongest 
proof we have of a spiritual world inconnnunicably separate 
from matter, is that it is neither conceivable nor in the line 
of the analogies of experience I "... . 

4 ' The antagonist school of Materialists pure and simple, 
is alike incapable of accepting the alleged fact of mate- 
rialization. The fundamental postulate of this class of 
persons is, that there can be no qualities in matter that are 
not matter. Indeed, with them it is absurd to talk of the 
qualities of matter ; for the very words, ' qualities of matter,' 
convey' the implication that there is in matter something 
not matter — which would be a very dangerous admission ; 
for that something not matter might possibly be more 
potent than matter itself. But aside from this hyper- 
physical objection of the Materialists to the existence of 
something latent in matter which is not matter, there is to 
them a greater one. And that is, that the alleged material- 
ization of spirits concedes the possibility of the action upon 
physical substances of an order of persons ivho are intrinsi- 
cally inappreciable by the ordinary senses. This concession 
would, in their view, be a concession of the reality of 
miracles ; and as miracles are impossible, materialization 
is impossible. 

" This objection rests upon a wrong conception of what 
should be considered a miracle. Though it is admitted 



148 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

that a miracle is not possible, it is well to define what it 
should be thought to be, if it were possible. The ordinary 
definition — a violation of the laws of nature — defines 
nothing ; for eveiy fact entirely new in human experience, 
being in conflict with all former experience, is to the 
observer a violation of the laws of nature. And as the 
totalit}' of the order of nature can never be known, it can- 
not be known that something entirely new to that order (so 
far as experience goes) may not occur. Our definition of 
a miracle, therefore, should show on its face that it is 
essentially impossible." . . . 

"At first thought, one would be inclined to credit the 
theologians with a ready predisposition to faith in the fact 
of materialization. . . . Why, then, is the alleged modern 
fact of materialization so distressingly offensive to them ? 

"Because, if a fact, its tendency is to depress human 
authority in matters of religion, to make every man his 
own mediator, and thus to do away with that arm}' of cler- 
gymen and priests who perform — honestly, it maybe — 
fictitious services of mediation between God and others than 
themselves. There is a very large class whose interest it 
is to make the access to God, or the gods, as circuitous as 
possible. Like all middle-men, they do not like compen- 
dious methods for the exchange of commodities. But 
when our invisible friends, called spirits, invest themselves 
temporarily in the masks of bodies, and demonstrate that 
death is dead, the one stupendous horror of all the ages 
lays aside its Gorgon head, men gain courage to treat with 
the Invisible God for themselves, and the reign of the 
priest, so far as it rests in cowardly superstition, draws to 
a sensible close. Such a result is alarming to the theolo- 
gians. The fear of death, and of what follows after, is 
their capital, and the principal source of their influence 
over the people. If spirits do appear visibly and tangibly, 
and if the} r shall continue to appear, all men will manage 
their post mortem concerns for themselves, and will not 
look to the l ambassadors of Christ ' for any very reliable 
instruction in those matters. The materialization of spirits 
carrying all these dire influences with it, as the seed carries 
the germ of the future tree, must of course, to the theolo- 
gians, be unreal." . . . 

" The effect upon the fastidious tastes of different 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 149 

schools of thinkers of the alleged materialization of spirits, 
has its comic aspects to such as are willing to admit ex- 
traordinary facts irpon reasonable evidence. The shock 
such alleged facts must give to all such as sympathize with 
Mr. Fiske, and who believe in no such spiritual world as 
can come in connection with matter, is abundantly ludi- 
crous. This class consists of students of the old psychol- 
ogy, who have formed their notions of spirits from specu- 
lations on the laws of abstract thought and on the various 
forms of emotion. With them it is an axiom that matter 
is always essentially tangible, and that spirit, being the 
perfect opposite of matter, has no necessary or conceivable 
contact with it. 

"How thoroughly this postulate pervades Mr. Fiske's 
speculations, will be evident from the extracts from his 
essay already cited, and particularly from the unction with 
which he reproduces the famous dictum of Descartes. 
This school must deny the possibility of materialization. 
For the presence of a material form in no case can guar- 
antee the presence of a soul. For according to their logic, 
there can be no spirit in living contact with matter, nor any 
matter in vital contact with spirit. As there is no rational 
evidence for them that a spiritual part animates living hu- 
man beings, the theory that a spiritual force or being 
can animate a temporary form of matter, and dissolve it 
again in thin air, must be for them in the last degree pre- 
posterous. As their conceited ignorance has sounded the 
utmost possibilities of nature, Why should one attempt to 
convince them of the reality of facts which put all their 
vain philosophy to shame? Their suffrages for the truth 
are not worth the trouble of winning." 

' ' There is another class of persons that affect a knowl- 
edge of scientific methods, who are quite sure that if a 
speaking, tangible form should suddenly appear in a closed 
room, to which no person but the spectators could gain 
admission, should verify its presence to the senses of sight 
and touch, should converse in an audible voice on topics 
familiar only to each witness, and should then as suddenly 
vanish, there would still be no proof in such a manifesta- 
tion of the presence of a spirit. How such a reasoner can 
with any certainty identify a friend on Monday w r hom he 
had last seen on the preceding Sunday, passes my compre- 
hension. For the real friend he has never really seen. . . . 



EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

This pretentious display of doubt in regard to the spiritual 
agency involved in such a case as is supposed, is of all 
claims to superior acuteness the most shallow and con- 
temptible." 

"All base things have their day* Wiry should not the 
prejudice of the savans, the bigotry of the theologians, the 
pretensions of the sciolist, be allowed to have theirs ? . . . 
The wave of the new movement will continue to rise 
slowly but surety, and it will never retire till all the objec- 
tions and cavils of the prejudiced many that do not discern 
the signs of the times are sunk in everlasting oblivion. 
Our facts depend for their acceptance on no person's pat- 
ronage ; the pressure of ridicule cannot extinguish or thrust 
them out of view. Steadily increasing in number, variety, 
and beauty, the}' are competent to win their own way to 
general recognition." 

In a paper written in reply to Mr. Youmans, of the 
Popular Science Monthly, Mr. Lyman says : 

" Professor Youmans acknowledges no spiritual world 
other than thoughts and emotions correlated to matter, no 
spiritual world in which moral agents exist intrinsically 
inappreciable by any of the senses, no spiritual world 
above the sensuous order. But the non-recognition of 
such a world is just what, in popular language, constitutes 
materialism. The popular apprehension has not yet re- 
duced the hemisphere of being opposed to matter to a 
nebulous mass of sensations, perceptions, conceptions, and 
feelings." . . . 

" The facts of Spiritualism certainty answer to all the 
criteria of the subjects-matter of any science, as laid down 
by Professor Youmans. They are such facts as have been, 
and still are, repeatedty experienced. They are not only 
accessible to the normal action of the human faculties, but 
most of them are quite palpable to the senses. The va- 
riety in which the}' occur renders them susceptible of clas- 
sification and methodized knowledge, and thus suggests that 
the law of their genesis and evolution can be compre- 
hended.'' . . . 

" Common people believe in a supersensual world, in 
which moral beings hold intercourse with one another in 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 151 

modes transcending the ordinary reach of the senses ; they 
have never imagined a spiritual world, inhabited only by 
thoughts, emotions, and volitions floating loose from 
souls." . . . 

"All argument against the occasional intervention of 
spirits in mundane affairs, on the ground of its impossibil- 
ity, or its incompatibility with the laws of nature, is simply 
frivolous. There are no known laws of nature that pre- 
clude it. The weight of human experience is against such 
facts, but that experience is in favor of facts every whit as 
Hystericus. On the contrary, there is a steadily augment- 
ing experience in favor of spiritual intervention coming 
through phenomena addressed to every sense, and indicat- 
ing a tendency to issue in an intercourse between ours and 
the supersensual world, constant, regular, and rigorously 
conditioned." 

Here I would again call attention to the circumstance 
that I claim for my basis the great verified facts of clair- 
voj^ance, as proved in the reading of closely-folded papers, 
and of direct writing, as proved in the German experi- 
ments with Slade, in those of hundreds of well-known per- 
sons in England and America, and in my own experiments 
with Watkins and others. To the phenomena analogous 
with these, and corroborated by them, I may frequently 
refer, and assume them as true without including them in 
my basis. And so, with regard to the Spiritual hypoth- 
esis : I shall assume that we have evidences of spirit 
power, both in the two t} T pical facts, which have been sci- 
entifically confirmed, and in others where the proofs have 
not been so cumulative and direct as we may expect 
them to be as the developments go on. But it is not 
for the spiritual Irypothesis that I have any concern, 
since it is one to which all the facts inevitably lead, and 
without which many of the higher phenomena cannot be 
explained. 

In the Popular Science Monthly there recently appeared 
a paper by Dr. Gairdner, of Edinburgh, in opposition to 
Spiritualism. Assuming that we have "absolute proof 



152 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

and evidence " in our own souls and bodies of a future for 
man, he would discredit any attempt to investigate the im- 
portant phenomena which invite our attention. But he 
fails to show where the " absolute proof" is to be found, 
that shall be satisfactory to many earnest and critical 
minds. No fact can be more notorious than that of the 
present skepticism and utter unbelief in regard to the im- 
mortality of the soul among a large class of intelligent 
persons. He who shuts his ej'es to this fact can do so only 
by ignoring what is written, published, and preached every 
day. 

Dr. Gairdner naivety asks, If such a fact as clairvoyance 
exists, what is there to prevent a sensitive from reading 
your private papers in your locked drawers? Truly, I 
know of nothing to prevent it, except the absence of con- 
ditions or the lack of power. I have repeatedly known a 
clairvoyant to detect not only my unspoken thoughts, but 
to read what I had written on a slip of paper, and then 
had rolled tightly into a pellet or wad, which he did not 
even touch except with the point of a pencil. Why he 
cannot always read a paper that lies folded in my friend's 
pocket or in a locked drawer, I cannot say. But how our 
ignorance of one fact can impair our absolute knowledge 
of another, I also fail to see. 

"If clairvo3'ance is true," saj'S Dr. Gairdner, " there is 
nothing to prevent a spirit from getting possession of a 
private paper, and publishing it." And then he adds : 
" But it has been shown that this cannot be done." The 
assertion is about as reasonable as it would be to say, that 
because a prize had been offered to the man who could leap 
a ditch twenty feet wide, and the prize had not been won, 
therefore it had been proved that the feat could not be 
accomplished. 

To what does Dr. Gairdner refer as his proof? Why, to 
the tradition among skeptics that a certain person once 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 153 

placed a hundred-pound note in a sealed envelope in the 
Bank of England, and promised to give it to any one who 
could tell the number ; but the prize was never won ; 
therefore, according to our logical opponent, there is no 
such thing as clairvoyance ; it is " in fact impossible." 

The conclusion is of the order styled fast. Belief in 
clairvoyance, the Doctor tells us, comes from " a diseased 
condition of the faculty of wonder." Truly a luminous dis- 
covery, worthy to be recorded in a scientific journal ! He 
should have learned that clairvoyance does not proceed 
from a simple effort of the will ; it is the unforced exercise, 
often involuntary, of a transcendent spiritual faculty. 
Schopenhauer, the eccentric German philosopher, relates 
that he once told his landlady in Milan the numbers of two 
lottery tickets which she had bought ; but when she began 
to praise him for his wonderful cleverness, he was discon- 
certed, his passive state was at an end, and he blundered 
in his attempt to tell the number of the third ticket. 

The recollection of a name or of a word cannot be forced 
by an effort of volition. How often we strive to recall 
something, and the more we strive the more unattainable 
seems to be the reminiscence ! We give up the pursuit, 
lapse into a passive state, and then, all at once perhaps, 
the word, name, or event comes back to us clearly and com- 
pletely. 

The deliverances of the memory are not subject always 
to the will ; and so it is with clairvoyance. Like the king- 
dom of heaven it does not come " by observation." There 
is an intelligent power in man, no more under the control 
of his will than are his involuntary muscles. We know not 
whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth. It transcends the 
outward senses ; and from it comes the light that enlight- 
eneth every man who comes into the world, even though its 
revelations may be rejected and contradicted by the spec- 
ulative intellect, which thinks itself the wiser. 



154 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

To Locke's proposition that there is nothing in the mind 
that has not come to it through the senses, Leibnitz made 
the familiar reply : "Except the mind itself." The reason- 
ing faculty which confirms the experience that the whole is 
greater than a part, or that a straight line is the shortest 
distance between two points, is not a derivation from the 
senses. As Mr. David A. Wasson well remarks : it is as 
much innate as "the potency of a beard is innate in the 
boy." 

The late Selden J. Finney, philosopher and spiritualist, 
wisely says : "If an axiom be only subjectively true, then 
it lies, for it is given as universal and necessary, and hence 
as objectively true. To deny its objective truth is to con- 
tradict the axiom itself. And if it be said that we cannot 
prove this, I answer, we must take our reason for the ulti- 
mate mental sovereign. And even a denial of such trust- 
worthiness is confession of the sovereignty of reason it- 
self ; for we are able to deny a mental proposition only by 
the assumption of a competent authority in mind. We 
must accept the primary laws and ideas, axioms of reason, 
as authoritative and supreme, whether or no." - 

Here is a specimen of what Alexis Didier, the Parisian 
clairvoyant, could do : — Some 3-ears ago, Mme. Celleron, 
wife of the proprietor of the " Villes de France, rue Vivi- 
enne," lost her watch at Neuilry. Presuming that she 
might have left it in the carriage which conveyed her there, 
she went to Alexis to make some inquiries in regard to the 
driver ; but as soon as she was in communication with the 
somnambulist he told her that her watch had been found 
by a soldier. "Wait," he added, "and I will read the 
number on his shako — it is 57 ; this soldier is in garrison 
at Courbevoie, and his name is Vincent." The lady has- 
tened to Courbevoie, and applied to M. Othenin, chief of 
battalion, who ordered a general inspection of the com- 
panies. But at that moment a soldier came out of the 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 155 

ranks and presented the watch, which he had found near 
the bridge of Neuilly, adding, that his military duties had 
prevented his making the proper efforts to find the owner. 
Upon the officer's demanding his name, he replied Vincent. 

In February, 1850, an English lady, once the pupil of 
the celebrated pianist Chopin, learning that he was ill, and 
suspecting that he was in want of money, sent him by mail 
a bank-note for 250 francs. Some months afterwards, 
while visiting in Paris, she called on her illustrious teacher 
and asked if the remittance had been received. On Cho- 
pin's replying in the negative, the lady, accompanied by 
Count de Grisimola, called on Alexis, who told her that the 
letter with its contents would be found at the domicil of 
the porteress of M. Chopin, in the drawer of a commode, the 
position of which he indicated. The lady hastened to verif} 7- 
this information, and it was found exact. The letter had 
been received in the absence of the porteress by a laboring 
woman, who had put it in the drawer of the commode, and 
had forgotten to say anything about it. 

On one occasion a milliner of the rue Ncuve-des-Matha- 
rins, No. 5, having lost a valuable dog, to which she was 
much attached, came to Alexis to learn if he could put her 
in the way of finding it. He directed her to go at once to 
the St. Germain railroad terminus, where she would recover 
her dog, which was about to be offered there for sale. She 
went to the place indicated, but not finding what she sought 
returned to Alexis, complaining of the false instructions he 
had given her. "You are right, madame," said he; "I 
was too precipitate ; I announced as occurring at the very 
moment what was not to take place till some minutes after- 
wards ; return whence you came, and your search will be 
crowned with success." She did as directed, and this time 
Alexis had not been in fault in his clairvoyance. His 
thought had run before the attempt of the fellow who was 



156 



EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 



going to sell the dog. The lady recovered the animal as 
had been promised. 

The following letter will show what estimate the most 
celebrated of French conjurors, Robert Houdin, put upon 
the manifestations in the presence of Alexis : 

Monsieur : As I had the honor of informing you, I had 
a second seance ; that at which I assisted yesterday at 
Marcillet's was even more marvellous than the first, and 
left no longer any doubt on my mind as to the lucidity of 
Alexis. I presented n^-self at this sitting with the pre- 
determination of closely watching the game of ecarte which 
had astonished me so much. This time I took even greater 
precautions than at the first trial ; for, distrusting myself, 
I took one of my friends as a companion, whose calm char- 
acter could appreciate coolly and establish a sort of equi- 
librium in my judgment. 

Here is what passed, and you can judge whether subtilites 
could ever produce effects like those I am about to cite. I 
unsealed a pack of cards brought by me, and the envelope 
of which I had marked so that it could not be changed. I 
shuffled and got the deal. I dealt with all the precautions 
of a man skilled in the finesse of his art. Useless pre- 
cautions ! Alexis checks me, and pointing out to me one of 
the cards which I had just placed before him on the table, 
says, " I have the king ! " * c But } T ou know nothing about 
it yet, since the trump-card is not given out." " You will 
see," he replied. In effect I turned up the eight of dia- 
monds, and his card was the king of diamonds. The game 
was continued in rather an odd manner, for he told me in 
advance the cards which I ought to play, although I had 
them concealed under the table, and pressed in my hands. 
At every play he would present one of his own cards with- 
out turning it up, and it was invariably found to be the card 
en rapport with that which I had myself played. 

I have then, returned from this seance as much over- 
whelmed with astonishment as I could well be, and per- 
suaded that it is altogether impossible that either chance or 
address could have produced effects so marvellous. 
Recevez, Monsieur, etc. 

Signe: Robert Houdin, Ma}* 16, 1847. 

To the Marquis de Mirville. 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 157 

Bat Alexis, who by flashes could do such marvels, was 
not unfrequently at fault, according to his own confession. 
He says : "The chief feature of the somnambulic lucidit3 r 
is its variabilit}'. While the conjuror or juggler, at all mo- 
ments in the day and before all spectators, will invariably 
succeed, the somnambulist, endowed with the marvellous 
power of clairvoyance, will not be lucid with all interview- 
ers and at all moments of the daj T ; for the faculty of lucid- 
ity being a crisis painful and abnormal, there may be at- 
mospheric influences or invincible antipathies at work op- 
posing its production, and which seem to paralyze all super- 
sensual manifestations. Intuition, clairvoyance, lucidit}', 
are faculties which the somnambulist gets from the nature 
of his temperament, and which are rarely developed in 
force." 

Again he says : ' ' The somnambulic lucidity varies in a 
wa}^ to make one despair ; success is continually followed 
by failure ; in a word, error succeeds to truth ; but when 
one analyzes the causes of this, no right-minded person will 
bring up the charge of charlatanism, since the faculty is 
subject to influences independent of the will and the con- 
sciousness of the clairvoyant." 

Hudson Tuttle, the estimable medium of Berlin Heights, 
Ohio, was at one time clairvoyant like Alexis Didier, but 
never received pay for his revelations. He gives the fol- 
lowing account of the sensitive condition in which a clair- 
voj^ant finds himself : 

" During the physical manifestations I was usually in a 
half-trance, intensely sensitive and impressible. The least 
word or jarring question, even when the intention was com- 
mendable, grated on my nerves like a rasp of fire. No 
words can convey the least idea of this condition. I can 
only compare it to that physical state which would result if 
the nerves were all laid bare. It seemed that the nerves 
of the spirit were in like manner exposed, and the word, 
or intonation of voice, which in the normal state would 



158 EVEB-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

pass unnoticed, broke with the roar of thunder, and tore 
and lacerated the quivering spirit. I remember once a 
gentleman called for a private sitting. 

" Together with my father and mother we sat for an 
hour, and there was not the least movement of the table, 
nor was I sensitive. The gentleman withdrew his hands, 
and in less than a minute the table was promptly raised, 
and by the alphabet spelled his father's name. The effort 
seemed to have been very great and exhaustive, and I had 
become almost unconscious. The name was scarcely pro- 
nounced when the gentleman seized the side of the table 
and began to rock it, saying, ' See, I can move it as well 
as any one.' Had he discharged an electric battery through 
my brain the shock would not have been greater or the 
pain more unendurable. The implication at ordinary times 
would have passed with a smile, for I had not the least de- 
sire or interest to Convert an} r one, but at that moment, 
when every nerve-fibre was tense and vibrating, they broke 
at the rude touch, and I awoke with anger, and my speech 
was hot with indignation. I could not explain to Mm how 
or why he had so offended me, for I could not understand 
myself, and after an hour I was filled with shame that I had 
so far forgotten n^self. 

"Mother, blessed soul, came forward with words of ex- 
planation, persuasion, and extenuation to the gentleman, 
and afterwards with balm for nry troubled mind, yet it was 
a long time before I recovered my former serenhy, or dared 
allow nrvself to fall into the same unguarded sensitive con- 
dition. As soon as I felt its approach I would instinctive- 
ly start back in undefinable terror, fearing again the fiery 
pain. 

" This, you may sa3 T , was an exceedingly trifling thing to 
produce such a result, and mediums should school them- 
selves to bear opposition, disapproval, and criticism. I 
speak advisedly when I say, that when the medium has 
gained this condition, his sensitiveness will have become so 
obtuse he will not be a medium. You say, ' A little thing. 
for so great a disturbance ! ' You forget that an almost 
imperceptible mote in the eye causes unbearable pain : 3 T et 
the e} T e is not to be compared in its sensitiveness with that 
of the brain in its spiritualized state." 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 159 

Object as we may to being under surveillance, the fact of 
clairvoyance persists. It is now daily demonstrated. Wrap 
ourselves as we may in our own individuality, look down 
as we ma}' in the arrogance of our self-sufficiency upon sur- 
rounding intelligences, we cannot escape from the great 
fact of the solidarity of all created things. Clairvoyance 
proves to us that there is no such privilege to be had as per- 
fect privacy ; that there is no such thing as absolute inde- 
pendence for an t y human being. We think we hold a secret 
in our breast ; we flatter ourselves that there is not another 
individual intelligence in the whole world that knows, or can 
know, what we would hide. Vain, illusive thought ! Our 
whole moral and physical nature is transparent to higher 
intelligences. Our secret is known perhaps by others be- 
fore we know it ourselves. 

A Roman Catholic writer, who, as he tells us, could not 
at one time listen with an}' patience to the mere mention of 
our phenomena, has in the Dublin Review some apt re- 
marks, of which, however, I can only give the pith in lan- 
guage much abridged. He remarks that a plausible lie 
soon loses its hold on the credence of men, and at length 
vanishes utterly and forever. But what has been the for- 
tune of these phenomena ? They were received at first not 
only with disbelief but with derision ; the}^ were rejected as 
untrue, not because not proven, but because incapable of 
proof, because they were impossible — and, indeed, impos- 
sible they are to mere human power and skill. The char- 
acteristic of the times is certainly not one of credulity. It 
was predicted that before the generation that witnessed the 
rise of these phenomena had died out, they would have 
disappeared and been forgotten. Well, }'ears have rolled 
on, and men who once impatiently repudiated the phe- 
nomena, having been induced to examine into what was 
making such a noise in the world, have been led, from ma- 
ture, and for a time prejudiced examination, to conviction. 



160 EVER-INCREASING TESTIMONY. 

In this wajr have been brought round several of the ablest 
and most learned men in Europe, plrysicians, philosophers, 
theologians, Catholic, Protestant, and free-thinking. 

Authority does not prove an opinion; but here there is 
a question of facts and of the testimony of the seuses, — 
of facts and testimonies repeated over and over again, be- 
yond the possibilit} r of calculation, in the greater part of 
Europe and America, not to speak of Australia, and re- 
corded year after year down to the present &&y. It is 
quite impossible that about such facts such a cloud of such 
witnesses should be all deceived. 

The charge that Spiritualism is a superstition recoils on 
its utterers. It is the remedy for all superstitions. Can 
beliefs founded on absolute and demonstrable facts prove 
less potent in influencing life and character than dogmas 
and conjectures? 

u Spiritualism," says Alfred R. Wallace, "is an experi- 
mental science, and affords the only foundation for a true 
philosophy and a pure religion. It abolishes the terms 
4 supernatural' and ' miracle' by an extension of the sphere 
of law and the realm -of nature ; and in doing so it takes 
up and explains whatever is true in the superstitions and 
so-called miracles of all ages. A science of human nature, 
which teaches that happiness in a future life can be secured 
by cultivating and developing to the utmost the higher fac- 
ulties of our intellectual and moral nature, and by no other 
method, is and must be the natural enemy of all super- 
stitions." 

" I have left off believing in deaths so called," writes 
Philip Pearsall Carpenter, the naturalist, (brother of the 
Dr. W. B. Carpenter who has fought so against our facts) 
and goes on to say : 

"The spiritual world appears to me close and near. 
Judging from all accounts, there are only a few hours, or 
days at most, before the spirit wakes again. I believe my 



UNSCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS. 161 

deprivation of home sympathies has made me live more in 
the spiritual world, from which I feel separated only by a 
veil of flesh. I feel as though it would never surprise me 
to find that I had died and was there : it often seems more 
natural than the present state. In old times, when I be- 
lieved in an external heaven, and thought we left off being 
men and became some queer kind of undefined angels, it 
was not so. Now I feel it to be a waking of the same 
humanity without the hindrances of flesh. ... In my 
intercourse with the Spiritualists it is evident to me that 
they do not mourn for death like orthodox Christians, 
whose heaven is more ideal than real. The} T really do be- 
lieve that their friends are living happily, and have inter- 
course with them. About this medium work I care very 
little : its principal use is to teach the reality of things 
unseen ; and it must be a verj T imperfect thing at best, 
because it is only the lowest elements of their nature that 
can communicate with the highest of ours. But for us all 
to look on the next state as an absolute continuation of 
this, only in a far purer and in every way better sphere, is 
good for us all, and especially for those who have treasures 
in heaven." 

The cause of the unbelief in what is taught in systems 
of theolog3 T , sectarian creeds, and historical assertions, on 
the subject of immortality, is that the advanced intellect 
of the age lacks a scientific basis for a full, energizing con- 
viction as to spiritual realities. It is idle to say that men 
ought to infer from their own natures that they have souls. 
They still lend too ready an ear on this point to the confi- 
dent contradictions of an arrogant Materialism, sporting 
the credentials of science. 

But here are the facts of Spiritualism, forcing upon 
those who will fairly investigate them, the great conviction 
that spiritual agency can be objectively proved. What 
folly is it, then, in the friends of religion to reject the aid 
presented, because there may be much that still seems per- 
plexing, incongruous, and even offensive in the develop- 
ments ? 

11 



162 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 



CHAPTER V 

IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 

In a previous chapter I referred to some fanciful theories 
as to the origin of the belief in immortality among the 
primitive races of men. I have contended that the belief 
must have sprung as a corollary from a knowledge of act- 
ual phenomena, such as millions have had proved to them 
in our own day. I am glad to learn from one of the pam- 
phlets of my esteemed friend, Thomas Shorter, of London, 
that niy convictions on this point are supported by the phil- 
osophical inferences of so high an authornTy as the late 
John Stuart Mill, who wisely says : 

" The argument from tradition, or the general belief of 
the human race, if we accept it as a guide to our own 
belief, must be accepted entire ; if so, we are bound to 
believe that the souls of human beings not only survive 
after death, but show themselves as ghosts to the liviug ; 
for we find no' people who have had the one belief without 
the other. Indeed, it is probable that the former belief 
originated in the latter, and that primitive men would never 
have supposed that the soul did not die with the bod} T , if 
they had not fancied that it visited them after death," 

Here we have the subtlest skeptical philosophy corrobo- 
rating one of our most important positions, namely, that 
the primitive tribes drew their belief in immortalit} 1 ', not 
from seeing their faces in the water, or their shadows 
against the sunlight, as Mr. Spencer supposes, but from 
seeing actual, objective, recognizable apparitions of de- 
ceased persons. 

The ground-thought of the system which I. H. Fichte 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 163 

drew from his knowledge of our phenomena is, according 
to Professor Franz Hoffman, of Wurtzburg, a God-given, 
spiritually-real individualism. Fichte accepts the facts of 
modern Spiritualism, and refutes the materialism, the pan- 
theism, and the merely realistic individualism of the day. 
From the standpoint of psycho-plrvsical science, he argues 
in favor of the objective nature of the soul itself. It has 
a certain where in space, but is all-present in every part 
of its space-existence. Its body is the real, its conscious- 
ness the ideal expression of its individuality. From its 
inner, continuing, invisible body, the separable exterior 
body must be distinguished. 

The inner body is the soul itself considered in its sense' 
relations only. The outer body is the chemical material 
body, appropriated and then dissolved, and, in death, alto- 
gether separable from the imperishable soul. The whole 
body is the organ of the soul, the instrument of its activity, 
and consequently a system of organs ; and the soul, con- 
sidered still in its sense-relations only, is unconscious- 
rational, body -fashioning force. Thus the spirit-form is 
fair or otherwise, according to the character of the indi- 
vidual. To higher spirits the hypocrite unmasks himself 
by his very aspect. "There is no shuffling — there the 
action lies in its true light." Fichte says of our facts : 

"Through their inner analogy, one with another, they 
become credible, and through their frequent recurrence 
among different peoples of different grades of culture in 
ancient and modern times, are found to cohere so remark- 
ably that neither the theory of an accidental reception of 
ever-returniug delusions, nor that of a superstition trans- 
mitted from generation to generation, can suffice as an 
explanation. However offensive, therefore, to the ruling 
notions of the day, they must be admitted to the domain 
of well-accepted psychical facts." 

"No faith," saj-s Leibnitz, "can be real or intelligible 
unless its foundations are detected in the human reason. 



164 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

Eeligion, dissevered from the reason of man, can have no 
hold or standing-place." It is the glory of Spiritualism 
that its appeal is to the reason through science ; that it 
gives us the elements of a religion, old as the world, and 
at once rational, scientific, and emotional. But this reli- 
gion the individual must himself deduce from our facts, 
aDd thus make it truly his own, and not a graft from some 
other man's tree of life. This being the case, there must 
be diversity of religious insight. 

"Anything becomes religious to us," says Mrs. Louisa 
Andrews, " which tends, directly or indirectly, to lift the 
mind above the lower and narrower spheres of thought 
into a contemplation of realities that are eternal, and by 
this uplifting to inspire in the heart that ' worship of some- 
thing afar from the sphere of our sorrow/ which is the soul 
of all true religion, irrespective of creeds. Spiritualism 
may do this or it may not. ' The fool sees not the same 
tree that the wise man sees ; ' nor do all the wise necessa- 
rily see the same. ' We receive but what we give.' " 

The same writer tells us that Spiritualists differ, one 
from another, in their views in regard to right living and 
right thinking, as widely as it is possible for men to do ; 
some insisting on a purely moral life, and others ready to 
sweep away all recognized boundary lines between right and 
wrong that may interfere with an indulgence of their own 
unchallenged desires. There are many of the latter class 
who claim to be Spiritualists ; and where are we to draw 
the line of exclusion? The influence exerted by Spirit- 
ualism having its source in the phenomena, we must not 
leave these behind as things outgrown, but continue to 
study them, and draw from them — confirming as they do 
belief in spiritual, immortal life — such truths as may make 
us wise unto eternit}\ 

Because many persons do not draw these precious infer- 
ences, it does not follow that the repeated demonstration 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 165 

of spirit power ought not to elevate us by filling us with 
the sense of immortality. Even the manifestations of an 
evil spirit may have their impressive lesson ; though unless 
we can do him good, the less we have of his society the 
better. "These proofs of spirit existence and energy," 
says Mrs. Andrews, "with all the mysteries involved in 
the exercise of unknown forces as they act upon the things 
we call material, must, rightly used, be of incalculable 
value." 

Spiritualism is not, as the ignorant have called it, "a 
form of religion." To the pure in heart it is religion itself. 
Theodore Parker, though lack of opportunities of investi- 
gation left him without personal proof of our facts, intui- 
tively recognized their vast significance ; for in his " Notes 
for Sermons," he says : "In 1856 it seems more likely that 
Spiritualism would become the religion of America than in 
156 that Christianity would become the religion of the 
Roman empire, or in 756 that Mohammedanism would be 
that of the Arabian populations : (1) It has more evidence 
for its wonders than any historic form of religion hitherto. 
(2) It is thoroughly democratic*, with no hierarchy ; but 
inspiration is open to all. (3) It is no fixed fact — has no 
punctum stans — but is a punctum fluens. (4) It admits 
all the truths of religion and morality in all the world- 
sects." 

Thus Spiritualism is eclectic. It gives us a basis of 
demonstrable truth for our religion. It is remarked by 
Henry Thomas Buckle that those who would found their 
belief in immortality on their religion, instead of founding 
their religion on their belief in immortality, are making a 
great mistake. "They imperil," he says, "their own 
cause. The}' make the fundamental depend upon the cas- 
ual ; the}' support what is permanent by what is ephem- 
eral ; aud with their books, their dogmas, their traditions, 
their rituals, their records, and their other perishable con- 



166 



IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 



trivances, they seek to prove what was known to the world 
before these existed, and what, if these were to die awaj-, 
would still be known, and would remain the common heri- 
tage of the human species, and the consolation of myriads 
yet unborn." 

Again he says : "It is to that sense of immortality with 
which the affections inspire us, that I would appeal for the 
best proof of the reality of a future life. So surety as we 
lose what we love, so surely does hope mingle with grief." 

I grant that the testimony of the affections is supple- 
mentary and important ; but it is not the original factor 
which made the belief in immortality so prevalent even 
among uncivilized tribes. That belief, as I have shown, 
had actual phenomena for its basis. 

And what is religion ? For no word have more defini- 
tions been invented. I will give another, acknowledging 
that it is a limited one : Religion is the sentiment of rev- 
erence or of appeal, growing out of a sense of the possi- 
bility that there may be in the universe a Power or powers 
unseen, able to take cognizance of our thoughts and our 
needs, and to help us spiritualty or physically. 

The religious sentiment is then genuine, legitimate, and 
almost universal. It will detract nothing from its authority 
for some Darwinian to tell us of its pedigree, to inform us 
that, like many traits of character, it is mostly the result 
of heredity ; of the gradual complexity of the brain-cells ; 
that it is a mere evolution from certain experiences, fears, 
hopes, and imaginations, all of which can be traced through 
merely material developments, like the physical faculties 
of man and beast, till by the survival of the fittest, and a 
progress over long tracts of time, we have arrived at our 
present state. Grant that this is all so, it does not explain 
how the original cell or germ should have been endowed 
with these amazing potentialities, nor does it detract from 
the legitimacy and the efficacy of the religious sentiment. 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 167 

Truly does Coleridge say: "A religion — i.e., a true 
religion — must consist of ideas and facts both ; not of ideas 
alone without facts, for then it would be mere philosophy ; 
nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are 
the symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they 
are grounded, for then it would be mere history." 

Spiritualism fulfils these requirements. Its facts, rightly 
construed, hold out the loftiest inducements to a noble, 
beneficent life. It proclaims to us that we think and do in 
the sight of a host of witnesses ; it recognizes the suprem- 
acy of law, physical, moral, and spiritual ; it looks for no 
relief from the penalties of sin through the mystical suffer- 
ings of another ; it teaches no vicarious advantage. It 
illustrates the efficacy of prayer, but teaches that the power 
of finite spirits is limited, and that the Divine Benignity is 
exercised in harmony with laws which it is for us to study 
and obey. It proves that as we sow we reap, and that man 
is preparing his future condition while here, by his ruling 
thoughts, desires, and acts, and is thus his own punisher, 
his own rewarder. 

Thus the religion prompted by the facts of Spiritualism 
cannot differ largely in an} T essential point from that of 
primitive Christianity. This did not spring from the de- 
cisions of councils, from the interpretations of students, 
from the dictation of majorities, from any dogma relative 
to vicarious atonement, the Trinity, or the nature of sal- 
vation. It was born of the knowledge that the Jesus whom 
they had known and conversed with had reappeared to 
certain disciples and friends after his crucifixion, and thus 
given them the assurance and the palpable proof of his own 
immortality, and indirectly of theirs. Nay, in his visible 
and tangible presentation of himself he had endeavored to 
dissipate the fears they associated with disembodied spirits, 
and had partaken of food to show that he was no mere 
shadow of his former self, but had that power over matter 



168 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

that he could re-compose a simulacrum of his earth-form, 
or reduce it to invisibility by a simple act of volition. 

This fact of Christ's reappearance was the cardinal doc- 
trine of the early Christians, their common faith and' hope. 
" The} T had," sa} T s Thomas Shorter, "an indubitable as- 
surance that as He lived they should live also. This in- 
spired them with enthusiasm, and a courage to brave torture 
and death. It was the apparition of Christ that converted 
Saul the poor persecutor into Paul the apostle, and trans- 
formed the heres}' of an obscure provincial sect into a uni- 
versal faith." 

We must believe in an absolute, immutable principle of 
goodness, and in a Divine Intelligence, from which all 
axiomatic, a priori truth must flow down to finite intelli- 
gences, if we would unite religion with morality ; for if we 
are at the rnercj- of some blind chance, under which what 
is right to-day may be wrong to-morrow, the cosmos is not 
likely to be a pleasant abiding-place for an eternity to truth- 
loving, justice-loving souls. An enlightened Spiritualism 
conducts the mind, sooner or later, to an enlightened The- 
ism — liberal as the sun and all-embracing as the universe. 
But it is not dogmatic, since its inferences are those of the 
scientific mind itself. 

The sphere of science, as science herself declares, is the 
sphere of demonstrable phenomena. Beyond that she does 
not assume to penetrate. Our Sadducean friends, however, 
as well as philosophers like Wundt, do not hesitate to enter 
this forbidden Beyond very confidently, as if they were 
qualified to teach us as to the existence or non-existence 
of a First Cause. As far as they do this they are indulging 
in mere speculation. Spiritualism differs from all specula- 
tive systems in presenting a body of well-attested phenom- 
ena, and a thoroughly scientific synthesis for its basis, 
since it is from phenomena only, supplemented by axioms 
and the postulates of reason, that all science is derivable. 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 169 

Spiritualism, then, in its primitive relations, is the science 
of pneumatology. What " form of religion " may proceed 
from it depends on the character, mental, moral, and emo- 
tional, of the recipient. He may be, in his own estima- 
tion, an atheist; for, as Bishop Butler has remarked, 
" That we are to live hereafter is just as reconcilable with 
the scheme of atheism, and as well to be accounted for by 
it, as that we are now alive is ; and therefore nothing can be 
more absurd than to argue from that scheme that there can 
be no future state." I have my doubts, however, whether 
atheism can ever thrive in the atmosphere of Spiritualism. 
As pneumatology is tending to be a science, Sadduceeism 
at least is doomed, and its expulsion from minds scien- 
tifically trained is merely a question of time. 

The inquiry, then, is not whether Spiritualism ma}- be 
favorable to religion, but whether it is true. And yet it has 
been the very life-blood of all the world's serious religions ; 
and if there is to be a religion of the future, the basis must 
be a scientific belief in the immortality of man. If we can 
once realize what Spiritualism makes known to us, that a 
finite spirit can manifest its existence by exercising a pre- 
terhuman power over matter in many intelligent ways, it 
makes scientifically possible the existence of an Infinite 
Spirit, conscious, intelligent, and omnipotent, able to create 
the very principle of matter, to will into existence a uni- 
verse, and to sustain it by his immutable volition. I admit 
that this faith must be largely and properly a postulate of 
the reason ; but Spiritualism, through its marvellous phe- 
nomena, vouches for it with the force of all its analogies. 
It is a familiar fact that there are Spiritualists who, in re- 
gard to the question of a supreme Spiritual Orderer, are 
agnostic, pantheistic, or atheistic. But that Spiritualism 
lends new authority to the theistic hypothesis, by proving 
grand spiritual possibilities, transcending all that human 
effort could accomplish or even comprehend, there can be 



170 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

no reasonable doubt. Establish the fact of this spiritual 
power over matter ; — from what a finite spirit can do, rise 
to an estimate of what an infinite spirit might do — and the 
hypothesis of a Supreme Intelligence, filling the earth with 
the exuberance of his life, and power, and love, becomes 
something more than a speculation. 

To say that religion cannot have science — i. e., a knowl- 
edge of the phenomena of nature, including the soul of man 
— for its basis, is as absurd as it would be to say that 
mathematics do not require axioms for their foundation. 
Religion may transcend phenomena and rise into a region 
which mortal science may not enter ; indeed it must do so, 
the more it ascends to the height of its great argument, the 
more it expands and draws nearer to the Infinite ; but if 
it have no other basis than the emotions, and reject all that 
intuition, science, and reason may offer for its justification, 
it may not soar to that ' ' purer ether, that diviner air," 
where faith is merged in knowledge. 

Religion has its root in the belief or intuitive feeling that 
within us or external to us is an intelligent, supersensual 
power that can affect us for good. According to Quatre- 
fages, religion is "a belief in beings superior to man, and 
capable of exercising good or evil influences upon his des- 
tiny ; and the conviction that the existence of man is not 
limited to the present life, but that there remains for him a 
future beyond the grave." 

Any scientific confirmation of such a belief must then be 
a new force added to it. If we can justify it by an appeal 
to actual phenomena, it is a gain which no sane man, not 
desiring annihilation, would forego. This is what Spiritu- 
alism enables us to do ; and therefore, since science " takes 
cognizance of phenomena, and endeavors to discover their 
laws," and consists in ' ' an infallible and unchanging knowl- 
edge of phenomena," Spiritualism is a science, though as 
yet in many respects rudimental. 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 171 

A critic objecting to the deduction of religion from 
Spiritualism, remarks, " How absurd, then, to demand that 
religion shall have a scientific basis ! " He goes on to tell 
us of the " shifting sands" of science, as if it were some- 
thing here to-day and gone to-morrow. Plainly he con- 
founds hypothesis with science. His argument rests on a 
palpable misconception. "Instead then of attempting," 
he says, "to place religion upon a basis consisting of the 
(shifting sands of science, would it not be more logical to 
attempt to find for it a religious basis ? " But is not that 
sentence a little tautological ? Is is not equivalent to tell- 
ing us to base religion on religion ? Where the ' ' logic " 
comes in it is difficult to discover. 

In a recent number of an American journal devoted to 
Spiritualism I find the following remarks from a corres- 
pondent : 

' ' Religion will eventually become science ; but in doing 
so it will cease to be religion. Alchemy lost its identity in 
chemistry ; astrology gave way to astronomy ; and religion, 
like both alchenry and astrology, being a S}*stem which is 
composed mainly of supposed facts and their imaginary 
relations, must pass away and be forgotten just as ftist as 
the real facts are discovered and their true relations under- 
stood." 

As there are innumerable differing definitions of the word 
religion, and as the writer of the above remarks has made 
a new definition, it would seem somewhat idle to criticise 
his assumption that religion must fade out as science ad- 
vances. If, as he says, religion is merely " a system com- 
posed mainly of supposed facts and their imaginary rela- 
tions," then no one will be likely to go into mourning at 
seeing religion thrust out. But many thoughtful persons 
have a very different estimate of religion from this. To 
them it is the very culmination of all truth and all knowl- 
edge ; it is science " flushed with emotion." 

When Kepler, as one of his grand discoveries flashed 



172 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

upon his mind, knelt in devout thanksgiving and awe at 
the realization that he was " re-thinking the thoughts of 
God," I hardly think he would have been in a mood to ad- 
mit that science is, or can ever be, the death of religion. It 
all depends upon what notions one has of religion, and what 
faculties he has for feeling it. 

And so, when this same writer says, " Spiritualism can 
never develop a religion in any sense," the force of the 
proposition all depends upon what sort of thing one's Spir- 
itualism is. One man's spiritual proclivities and affinities 
ma} 7 lead him into very bad company and into a very low 
sphere of thought ; while another's may surround him with 
all uplifting influences. 

To say that Spiritualism can never "develop a religion 
in any sense," is about equivalent to saying that human 
and angelic thought can never develop a religion in any 
sense. There is no scientific force in the affirmation ; it 
is pure dogmatism, entitled to not the least scientific re- 
spect. 

One mind ma} r see in certain facts very different ' ' rela- 
tions " from those that are suggested to another mind. 
The thought that forced a Kepler down on his knees might 
be wholly barren and unsuggestive to a Gradgrind or a 
Haeckel. In Spiritualism we find only what we bring the 
vision and the faculty for finding. To those who really 
know its phenomena, it is as much a science even now as 
astronomy or chemistry. So far is it from being true that 
science has a tendency to kill out religion, the real truth is, 
as Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, and Franklin found it, re- 
ligion becomes all the more religion as the mind advances 
in positive science. 

Are we to suppose that as physiologj 7 , anthropology, the 
laws of parentage, heredity, and embryolog} 7 , are devel- 
oped, the natural affections of the human race must die out? 
Yet such a proposition would be quite as philosophical as 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 173 

the notion that as religion grows more scientific it must 
dwindle and die. 

Religion, pure and undefiled, is not the child of ignorance 
and superstition ; the more we know and feel, the more truly 
and purely religious must we become. On from the time 
of Copernicus science has been revealing to us new mar- 
vels, and widening our conceptions of that inscrutable 
Power that lives in all life. Can the growth of a scientific 
Spiritualism lead, any more than the growth of the sister 
sciences, to a less reverent and adoring sense of that Su- 
preme Mind, whose thoughts it is our discipline here, like 
Kepler's, to " re-think," — an occupation which an eternity 
cannot exhaust? 

Let no one fear that as man advances in knowledge of 
the facts of universal nature he w r ill grow less religious, 
less loving, less reverent, or less aspiring. All history and. 
all human biography prove the contrary. It is the shallow 
draught that intoxicates the brain ; tk but drinking largely 
sobers us again." It is the half-way, the second-hand phi- 
losophers — the men partially informed, confounding science 
in the state of hypothesis with science in the state of fact 
— who find science and religion at variance, and imagine 
that the latter will be compelled to yield the right of way 
to the former. 

All religions have had some form of Spiritualism for 
their basis. Aptly does Mr. Stainton Moses remark : " As 
a factor in the religious thought of the age, as a regener- 
ating force operating most strongly within the pale of re- 
ligious systems that sadly need purifying, I believe it (Spir- 
itualism) to be imperishable in its effects." To ignore the 
religious significance of Spiritualism — to fail to recognize 
it as tfc God's gift to a Sadducean generation" — is to be 
content with the husk and reject the life-giving grain. All 
religions still owe to it — in its past forms if not in its 
present — r.ll they have in them of vitality. 



174 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

The abstract, attenuated Spiritualism, for which Des- 
cartes, among the more modern philosophers, is so largely 
responsible, still dominates in philosophy, in religion, and 
in the speculations of leading physicists. Nearly all the 
attacks on Spiritualism from physicists like Tyndall, or 
amateur philosophers like Mr. John Fiske or Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, are grounded on the conception which holds the 
Cartesian notion in regard to the soul as the only scientific 
one, since from that to a psychic nonentitj- the step is easy. 
These men consider the soul, not as inhering in a substra- 
tum, to which death is not a sting and the grave is not a 
victoiy, — but as something having not so much substantial 
existence as the reflection of a form in a mirror. Thought, 
for them, does not inhere in a supra-plrysical substance, 
but in a certain pulp3 T , cerebral matter, going off in a flux 
of atoms, and disorganized forever by death. Hence 
thought, consciousness, emotion, having no other instru- 
ment or basis, vanish like a reflected image when the mir- 
ror is covered or shivered. To such thinkers, therefore, 
with their limited or partial science, the irninortality of the 
soul is an absurdity, since to them the individual life and 
experience are the exclusive property of that compound 
of charcoal, lime, water, ox}-gen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, 
which goes to make up the visible body. Dissolve and 
dissipate these by death, and the phenomenon, man, has 
an end, body and soul. 

No thought is here given to the consideration that all 
these substances and gases may exist in, or are resolvable 
into, invisible states, in which their powers and uses may 
be greatly augmented for spiritual appropriation, if neces- 
sary. The following remarks are by I. H. Fichte : 

' ' Certainly this is a serious revelation at a time when an 
earnest belief in a future for man has been so widely im- 
paired or dismissed. Thus should modern Spiritualism 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 175 

become a monitor and a stimulator for us to recover a firm 
and abiding assurance of our immortality. 

u The causes that have turned the so-called educated 
class away from this belief in a spiritual organism are 
far from being irrefutable arguments against its scientific 
possibility : they are wholly untenable as such. The 
grounds for an enlarged and improved psychology lie in 
modern Spiritualism, since its physical phenomena are, in 
remarkable particulars, analogous to those known long ago. 
The old has been unexpectedly confirmed by the new, and 
vice versa. 

"•The power of the departed to materialize is entirely 
antagonistic to all conceptions of a pure abstract spiritual- 
ity as the only ground of being in a future state. This 
new science of transcendental physics, the elements of 
which are presented in materialization and other objective 
phenomena, is as yet, however, only in its first uncertain 
beginnings. Belief in the immortality of the soul is ratified 
by these evidences of psychical experience. It is now 
known that we ma}' seize our future destination already 
here in the earth-life. The trite sa3'ing, '•Memento morif is 
now converted into the more serious one, '•Memento vivere,' 
which means, ' Remember that you are to live hereafter.' 
The future state is a continuation of the present, and will 
be affected by our experiences and our prevailing thoughts 
and affections here." 

Coming from an octogenarian of vast experience in psy- 
chological and philosophical studies, a son of that Fichte 
who was one of the most eminent philosophers and elo- 
quent writers of Germany, and one of the most active of 
her citizens in her day of disaster, the words I have quoted 
ought certainly to carry weight. Fichte looks to the ad- 
vance of modern Spiritualism as an earnest of the revivifi- 
cation of the religious sentiment, and the precursor of a 
high and purified moralit} 7 ; since a knowledge that we are 
shaping our future destiny by our acts, thoughts, and affec- 
tions in this life — a knowledge that we are under the scru- 
tiny of all clairvoyant spirit-intelligences — must, as new 
generations are bred up to accept this as a revelation of 



176 IS SPIKITUA.L SCIENCE 

science, exercise a most important influence upon the char- 
acter and conduct of mankind. 

Spiritualism has been referred to as " a new religion." 
On the contrary, it is the attracting principle, assimilating 
whatever is essential in all religions, but contradicting 
nothing that the eminent saints and sages of all the cen- 
turies have, in their highest moods, recognized as the 
eternally true, and subverting nothing of vital truth in any 
religion. Since Spiritualism is coeval with humanity, 
there can be nothing new in it, except so far as there is 
something new in every step made in life and knowledge 
by the human race, or in every immortal soul that appears 
on the stage of terrestrial being, and passes on to the 
spirit- wo rid. 

Let it be remembered that Spiritualism is now in a tran- 
sitional state, and that we cannot expect its full results in 
a religious respect until its external phenomena are freely 
accepted by coming generations as facts of science. When 
the minds of men are once set at rest in regard to these 
actual occurrences, attention will be more generally directed 
to the higher, interior, and moral meanings which the sub- 
ject involves. We may then expect the development of 
those truths which must give new force to the religious 
intuitions of our nature. 

It would hardly be fair to hold a novelist to a strict phil- 
osophical account for the opinions he niay seem to favor. 
His business is to invent — to deal in fiction ; and we can- 
not always draw the line between what he would seriously 
teach and what he means simply as a bit of inoffensive 
character drawing. But the extent to which the laudator es 
librorum novorum, hostile to Spiritualism, have extolled 
Mr. Howells's "Undiscovered Country" as a just and 
much-needed analysis of a movement which is fast revolu- 
tionizing the minds of men in regard to a future state, 
induces me to exhibit the grounds of my dissent. If I 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 177 

may believe the eulogistic reviewers, whose praise of his 
literary ability is doubtless just, he gives his own con- 
clusions in the words of his reformed Spiritualist, " Boyn- 
toii," in representing him as declaring, that " Spiritualism 
is a grosser materialism than that which it denies ; a ma- 
terialism that asserts and affirms, and appeals for proof 
to purely physical phenomena," — and that it is " as thor- 
oughly godless as atheism itself ; and no man can accept it 
upon any other man's word because it has not yet shown 
its truth in the ameliorated life of men." 

I do not for a moment suppose that this senile and vapid 
abuse of Spiritualism by the imaginary old man conveys 
the real opinions of Mr. Howells. I do not charge it upon 
him, as some of his friends have clone, that such is the 
fact. I will therefore reply to him solely in his capacity 
of a novelist, leaving the question open as to his real 
views. 

The materialism which he makes Boynton charge upon 
Spiritualism is (1) simpry that of the Hebrew and Christian 
Scriptures. See Gen. xviii., how Abraham entertained 
three angels ; in the 2d verse : "And, lo, three men stood 
beside him ; " and food having been prepared for them, in 
the 8th verse it is said, " And he stood by them under the 
tree, and they did eat." In Ezek. ii. 9, we find that a ma- 
terialized spirit-hand holds out "a roll of a book" . . . 
" written within and without" by direct spirit-power. The 
crucified Christ is represented as entering a room with 
closed doors, and reappearing in so lifelike and palpable a 
form as to be recognized by his disciples, and to be able to 
show his wounds, and to say to one of the Twelve who was 
not present when the Saviour first came, and who doubted 
the report of the rest, — "Reach hither thy finger, and 
behold my hands ; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust 
it into my side ; and be not faithless, but believing." Is 
12 



178 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

not this the very ne plus ultra of what our amiable nov- 
elist calls materialism? 

With what new force all this narrative is invested, when 
one can really accept it as in perfect harmony with natural 
law, and therefore perfectly credible ! And when Jesus 
would cure the apostles of that demonophobia which made 
them regard a returned human being as something uncanny 
and unnatural, did he not vindicate his power of material- 
ization, and dissipate their dread, with the remark, "Be- 
hold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me 
and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see 
me have " ? And further to impress them with a sense of 
his existence as the same Jesus they had known, and 
supped with, he saj'S, "Have ye any meat? And they 
gave him a piece of broiled fish and of an honeycomb. 
And he took it, and did eat before them." 

All this "grosser materialism" an experienced Spir- 
itualist can accept as thoroughly consistent with facts he 
has known, either as a witness or through the testimony of 
others. Truly here indeed is "a materialism that asserts 
and affirms, and appeals for proof to purely physical phe- 
nomena." Will our novelist say it was all right centuries 
ago, but all wrong now ? 

Spiritualism ma}^ be to us either a "gross materialism" 
or a sublime manifestation of spirit-power, according to 
the degree and quality of our moral and mental insight and 
predisposition. But how can the reappearance of Christ 
affect me as a type and a guaranty of my own immortality 
unless I can see in it the same process by which other de- 
parted human beings can give us tokens of their existence ? 
Was 'it then simply a reanimated corpse, a monstrous 
"Frankenstein" that appeared to the Twelve? Or will 
you. say it was that corpse changed into a ' ' glorified 
body" (a glorified body with wounds!) and refer to the 
disappearance of the cadaverous remains from the sep- 






HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 179 

ulchre as the reason for your theory ? If it was a body that 
could enter a room with closed doors, it was plainly some- 
thing distinct from the earth-body. Whether Christ, as a 
human spirit, had that power over matter that he could 
dissipate and recompose the atoms of his old body, I can- 
not say ; I will say, however, that if he had that power, 
the presumption is that it is one common to all human 
spirits. Because I accept so much of the narrative as is 
reconcilable with known facts, it does not follow that I 
must accept all the rest. But I find in the Christian Scrip- 
tures no passage that justifies the interpretation that the 
re-materialized body of Christ was a reconstruction of the 
very particles of matter that formed his physical organ- 
ism — the same corpse which he had parted from at his 
crucifixion, so re-animated or "glorified" as to be inde- 
pendent of material obstructions. Immortality must be 
inferred from a continuation of life quite independent of 
the corruptible body that is laid in the tomb to mingle 
with the elements like other corporeal exuviae which we are 
all the time casting off. 

Whether the spirit has that transcendent power that 
would enable it to create, independently of its own form, 
an animated simulacrum of its earthly body, or whether the 
spirit-body attracts to itself from the atomic spheres of 
mortals and from the atmosphere the ultimate particles 
which, by condensation, are made to resemble any material 
substance, or whether both modes of presentation may be 
used, are questions which perhaps can be settled only by 
our own post-mortem experiences. 

In giving his readers to infer (2) that the Spiritualist 
has no other proof than the physical to which to appeal, 
our novelist shows himself altogether too swift an accuser. 
What is clairvoyance ? What is prevision ? What the use 
of languages unknown to the medium? The intellectual 
evidences, too various to be summed up? The reminis- 



180 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

cences, showing that the earth-born affections, transferred 
to the unseen world, have been deepened rather than par- 
alyzed ? Surely such proofs can be classed as in the highest 
sense mental and spiritual. 

The charge (3) that Spiritualism may be stigmatized as 
being u as thoroughly godless as atheism itself," since " it 
has not yet shown its truth in the ameliorated life of men," 
is a non-sequitur, to which even a novelist, in the full blast 
of his inventive powers, ought not to have resorted. Pre- 
cisely the same argument might be used against all great 
beliefs, including those of Theism, Buddhism, and Chris- 
tianity. If we are to gauge our estimate of the truth by 
the character of its utterers, our creed is likely to be a 
very short one. 

The novelist makes his representative Spiritualist, Bojm- 
ton, give up his belief because he learns from an old mag- 
azine that there was once a girl in whose presence some of 
the minor medial phenomena occurred, for which the in- 
vestigator sought a natural cause ; '* and he found that by 
insulating the posts of the girl's bedstead — for these things 
mostly occurred during her sleep — he controlled them per- 
fectly. She was simply surcharged with electricity." 

And this is the novelist's explanation of the whole mat- 
ter ! A surcharge of electricity ! The theory was exploded 
as far back as 1850 by the experiments of Dr. Hare and 
others ; and the evocation of it at this late da}' to eke out 
the requirements of a work of fiction would not call for 
notice except for the fact that the device has been com- 
mended as if it were something more than an extinct con- 
jecture. Electricity has been of no avail in explaining the 
medial phenomena. It was used b}' Win. Crookes, F.R.S., 
and C. F. Varle} T , F.R.S., to verify the genuineness of the 
form-manifestations at Mr. Luxmore's house, London, early 
in March, 1874. This was done b} T means of a galvanic 
batteiy and cable-testing apparatus, which was so delicate 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 181 

that any movement whatever on the part of the medium 
would be instantly indicated, while it would be impossible 
for her to play the part of the spirit without breaking the 
circuit and being instantly detected. 

The novelist's attempt to resuscitate the defunct hypoth- 
esis of insulation can delude only the ignorant. Among 
the objections to Spiritualism he puts into the mouth of his 
Boynton is this : " It offers nothing but the barren fact that 
we live again." So, then, we are to accept his word for it 
that immortality, if a fact, is a barren one ; and that Paul 
was out in his reckoning when he said, " If in this life only 
we have hope, then are we of all men most miserable." A 
barren fact ! How many there are who would give up life 
and fortune if the}^ could once be sure of that barren fact ! 

" The Immortal Life, b}* John Weiss," is the title of a 
posthumous volume (1880) published in Boston. I knew 
the author. He was a man of genius and a strenuous be- 
liever in human immortality. But he seems to have had 
a great disdain for a belief founded on creeds, traditions, 
or historical and psycho-plrvsical facts. He was so willing 
to trust to his own estimate of the energy of the primitive 
faculties — of the soul itself — to his own inward aspira- 
tions towards the immortal life — that he even neglected 
to investigate with an}- thoroughness the phenomena which 
would have proved to him that he was wrong in his attitude 
of opposition to Modern Spiritualism. 

He does not put quite so fine a point on the great ques- 
tion as Matthew Arnold does, who finds " the true basis 
for all religious aspiration after immortality " in what he 
calls "the strong sense of life from righteousness, capable 
of being developed, apparently by progress in righteous- 
ness, into something immeasurably stronger." So atten- 
uated and contingent a belief could hardly have suited 
Weiss's delicate yet robust mind. 

After frankly admitting that fc * if the soul is going to con- 



182 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

tinue its personal existence, and not be merged into blind 
currents of forces, or states of motion, it must be furnished 
with another set of senses correspondent to another set of 
impressions which result from a new relation between the 
universe and the soul," — he plants himself in vehement 
antagonism to the ancient and rational idea of the Spirit- 
ualist, that the germ, the embryo, or the psychical organ- 
ism, essential to that continuity of personal existence, is in- 
volved in man's present constitution, and is the explanation 
of those spiritual powers manifested in clairvo} T ance, in 
pneumatography, and other proved phenomena. 

This is the view of many of the greatest thinkers in the 
annals of humanity. Professors Stewart and Tait, of Ed- 
inburgh, in their " Unseen Universe," a work thoroughly 
scientific in its plan, tell us that it is only within the last 
thirty or forty years that there has gradually dawned upon 
the minds of scientific men the conviction that there is 
something besides matter or stuff in the physical universe, 
which has at least as much claim as matter to recognition as 
an objective reality, though, of course, far less directly ob- 
vious to our senses as such, and therefore much later in 
being detected. Crookes's discovery of the supra-gaseous 
state of matter in high vacua I have remarked upon else- 
where. 

The physicists to whom I have referred arrive logically 
at the conclusion that there is an invisible universe, from 
which life as well as matter proceed, and that immortality 
is possible without a break of continuity . Thus they accept 
the Pauline doctrine of a spiritual bocty, now existing, 
either actually or potentially, and making life continuous 
from the seen to the unseen world ; and they quote with ap- 
proval this passage from Swedenborg : "A man at death 
escapes from his material body as from a rent or worn-out 
vesture, carcying with him every member, faculty, and 
function complete, with not one wanting, yet the corpse is 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 183 

as heavy as when he dwelt therein." From this it would 
seem that Swedenborg regarded the nervous fluid as among 
the so-called imponderables. Why, then, should not the 
spiritual body belong to the same class ? 

The spiritual senses, Weiss tells us, do not yet exist. He 
says : 

" They cannot exist ; the ground is preoccupied. The 
soul can be related to but one body at a time, just as it can 
think but one thought and experience but one feeling at a 
time ; for the most complex internal sensations have a uni- 
ty, whose place cannot be occupied by another at the same 
time. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body, 
but not both at once ; and one cannot overlap and be en- 
tangled in the other. The soul must be entirely ignorant 
of the second body until it has ceased to use the first." 

Here is a tissue of plausible assertions without one par- 
ticle of scientific proof. Cannot a man make use of two 
senses at once? Cannot I both hear and see you, and shall 
it be said that the seeing and hearing are not a simulta- 
neous complex thought, but that one must precede the 
other? Experience contradicts the notion, however stoutly 
logic may assert it. The faculties and capabilities of the 
soul are complex. Clairvoyance proves that there is some- 
thing deeper in us than our external faculties of vision ; 
though of this we msij be unconscious in our normal state. 
Weiss is in error when he argues that one faculty may not 
"overlap another" as yet latent or undeveloped. The 
analogies by which he would prove that the soul cannot be 
simultaneously related to its earth-body and its spirit-body 
are purely fanciful ; and his attempt to correct the apostle 
Paul, who distinctly tells us that " there is a natural body 
and there is " (not shall be) " a spiritual body," is a little 
presumptuous, seeing that the contradiction is so unsup- 
ported by proofs. As well might he sa} T that the worm 
and the potential chrysalis could not coexist. Is it true, 
as Weiss asserts, that a man can experience but one feel- 



184 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

ing at a time? Can he not be simultaneously afflicted by 
tooth-ache and a twinge of the gout — by frost and fire? 
" No matter," he saj T s, "how curious the facts of somnam- 
bulism, of unconscious cerebration, of the magnectic con- 
dition, and of those which arise from a double hemispheric 
brain, may be, they are all referable to one material body, 
and to the soul, its ordinary tenant, who cannot quit with- 
out killing it — who cannot have another till that one is 
killed." 

Strangely contradictory to these' views is the following 
sentence, which comes in some sixteen lines further on : 
' ' Nothing can save the soul from collapsing into the blind 
forces of the world but the preservation of its identity ; 
and that cannot be preserved without a frame to hold it, a 
sj^stem of organs by which it can express spiritual func- 
tion." "Well and truly stated ! Stick a pin there. But 
what is to become of the soul at death unless this ' ' frame 
to hold it," this " sy stem of organs by which it can ex- 
press spiritual function," is pre-related to it so that there 
shall be no unbridged hiatus — so that ' ' the frame to hold 
it " (the soul) shall not be a foreign body magically sent 
for its occupancy (at death) , but a body with organs in full 
harmony with all the mental activities, the experiences and 
developments of its earth-life? In continuous existence 
there must be an organ for memory, connecting the indi- 
vidual with the past, and in the next place such an organism 
and such a universe that he can be active in various ways 
in the present. All this is substantially admitted by Pro- 
fessors Stewart and Tait. And how else is identity to be 
preserved in the transition from one state of being to an- 
other? How is the interval to be annulled, unless the soul 
can carry with it that " system of organs," which, as Weiss 
tells us, (inconsistently with his objections to a duplex 
organism,) is essential to its preservation from " a collapse 
into the blind forces of the world " ? 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 185 

Weiss seems to be of the opinion that the disembodied 
soul will " attract " a suitable bocty. He says : 

" The soul of your friend, then, passes from a frame of 
flesh into a frame more subtly woven, without a single cor- 
poreal characteristic in it, yet not without the character of 
matter. So to speak, blood will still tell ; that is to say, 
the finer soul will attract and use the finer body, just as it 
does now by the principle of heredity." 

Subtly reasoned and partially true ; only one considera- 
tion is dropped which vitiates the hypothesis as a whole. 
Weiss has told us distinctly that the soul's identity " cannot 
be preserved without a frame to hold it." Yet now he 
launches his soul (it matters not whether for a moment or 
for an eternity) into disembodiment, " merges it into blind 
currents of forces, or states of motion," leaving it to the 
soul, thus merged and loosened from all its moorings, to 
attract to itself a frame that shall be ' ' without a single 
corporeal characteristic in it, yet not without the character of 
matter!" Is not matter itself a " corporeal characteris- 
tic " ? Was Weiss of Hibernian descent ? 

Is there not a lack of precision and consistency in an 
argument like this ? Shutting his eyes to the facts of Spir- 
ritualism, how could he help being carried into these gross 
contradictions? For be it said, John Weiss, when he has 
truth on his side, as he often has, argues with a precision 
and force which places him high among the best and most 
original thinkers of the nineteenth century. 

Against the phenomenon of form-manifestation, or the 
power of spirits to " materialize themselves into visibility," 
he brings this objection: "They already have a body of 
their own, and yet we are told they make another body out 
of some property of the medium. The spirit could not 
exist for an instant without its bod}', and yet it slips into 
one which the medium exhales." 

There are two theories as to the mode of the presenta- 



186 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

tion. One is, that the spirit does not really become in- 
corporated in the visible bod} T or member, but that he has 
that power over the elements of matter that he can create, 
independently of his own spirit-body, an animated simula- 
crum of his earthly body as it was at any period of its ex- 
istence. The other theory is, that the spirit-body may 
attract to itself from the atomic spheres of the medium and 
others, or from the atmosphere, the ultimate particles, finer 
than the effluvia of musk, which by condensation are made 
to resemble any material object, according to the will of 
the spirit, and that he can do this with the rapidit} T of 
thought. The latter is the common theory, though the 
former is perhaps more consistent with the fact that the 
manifestations are often so fragmentary and imperfect. 
The extemporization is then merely tentative ; the memory 
of the ' ' materialized " spirit is often at fault ; and the 
mind sometimes works as if it were in a mist. 

It has been asked : ' ' Do the spirits really extemporize 
bodies possessing all the chemical constituents and organic 
parts belonging to the corporeal forms which they occupied 
during their rudimental life on earth ? " Obviously this is 
a question which cannot as yet be answered. There is 
good reason to believe that spirits economize their efforts, 
and give no more than is necessary for the purpose in view. 
If they can suggest identity by simply presenting a hand, 
known by some peculiar malformation to be a fac-simile of 
a hand once belonging to the earth-body of a relative or 
friend, they may confine themselves to this one manifesta- 
tion. Sometimes merely the facial part of a head is pre- 
sented, while the back part is hollow or amorphous. Dr. 
J. M. Gully, an educated physician, formerly at the head 
of the well-known water-cure establishment at Great Mal- 
vern, has brought his powers of calm, philosophical inves- 
tigation to our phenomena, and in one of his letters to me 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION ? 187 

he writes, July 20, 1874, in regard to the experiments with 
Florence Cook : 

" That the power grows with use was curiously illustrated 
by the fact that, for some time only a face was producible, 
with occasionally arms and hands ; with no hair, and some- 
times with no back to the skull at all — merel}* a mask, with 
movement, however, of eyes and mouth. Gradually the 
whole form appears — after, perhaps, some five months of 
seances, once or twice a week. This again' becomes more 
and more rapidly formed, and changed, in hair, dress, and 
color of face, as we desired." 

Mr. Tapp, of the Dalston (England) Association of In- 
quirers, relates that he was frequently permitted to scan 
the face and figure of the spirit form known as Katie, com- 
ing through Miss Cook, in a good light. Once she laid her 
right arm in his outstretched hands, and allowed him to 
examine it closely. It was plump and shapely, longer than 
that of the medium. The hands, too, were much larger, 
with beautifully shaped nails, unlike those of Miss Cook, 
who was in the bad habit of biting her nails. Holding 
the arm of the materialized form lightly in one hand, he 
passed the other hand along it from the shoulder. "The 
skin," he says, " was beautifully — I may say unnaturally 
— smooth, like wax or marble ; yet the temperature was 
that of the healthy human body. There was, however, no 
bone in the wrist. I lightly felt round the wrist again, and 
then told Katie that the bone was wanting. She laughed 
and said, 'Wait a bit ; ' and after going about to the other 
sitters, she came round and placed her arm in my hand as 
before." This time Mr. Tapp was satisfied ; the bone was 
there. On another occasion he caught the spirit-form by 
the wrist, and he says : ' ' Her wrist crumpled in my grasp 
like a piece of paper or thin card-board, my fingers meet- 
ing through it. I let go at once, and expressed my regret." 
Katie reassured him, and forgave the unintended rudeness, 
sa}ing she could " avert any untoward consequence." 



188 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

Facts like these may not } T et be as scientifically demon- 
strable as the t} T pical facts of my "basis," but they are 
credible and consistent. They show that these spirit- 
materializations may be often fractional and imperfect. At 
the same time, we have reason to suppose that all the parts 
of a human bod} 7 , exterior or interior, including the blood 
and the viscera, ma} 7 , if wanted, be either imitated or du- 
plicated by spirit-power. The fact that parts are often 
omitted in the materialization is no argument against the 
power to produce a complete whole. The existence of un- 
testable atoms is assumed by materialism as a reasonable 
lrypothesis. May it not be that spirits can exercise over 
those atoms a power not easily conceivable by mortal intel- 
ligence, in composing and dissipating transient forms, just 
as they can do many other things, as to which we cannot 
as 3 T et begin to explain the modus operandi? 

My own experience confirms that of Dr. Gully. It is 
not to specialists in science, wholly unprepared for proofs 
of psychic power, that I address myself here. What I 
have to say will not, I am well aware, help my credit with 
many whose good opinion I would like to have. But I 
must make a clean breast of it. Of the fact that I have 
witnessed the attempt of a venerated relative, not of this 
world, to manifest to me objectively at a medial seance, 
her identity through her power over matter in producing a 
simulacrum of her earth-boclv, I have never had a doubt 
since the occurrence. At first the face presented was a 
mere disk, with hardty a feature prominent, reminding me 
of the face- like picture of the moon in story-books. I at 
once said: "This manifestation cannot be for me" (as it 
had claimed to be) ; "I do not recognize a single trait." 
There was a delay of half a minute at the aperture, and 
then the entranced medium said : ' ' The spirit insists ; she 
says it is for you that she is waiting, and asks you to look 
again." I consented, went up again to the aperture, and 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 189 

at once, without any forethought or anticipation, exclaimed, 
1 Is it possible ! ' The recognition was instantaneous. I 
mentioned no name, asked no question. But the spirit, 
through the simulacrum, seemed to know at once that her 
attempt had been successful ; and her familiar and peculiar 
demonstrations of delight and affection were even more 
convincing than words. Every little gesture, the dainty 
and playful putting up of two hands to pat me on the 
cheeks, the kiss on the forehead, were all reproductions of 
the old ways which characterized her, when during her last 
illness I used to enter her room to receive her good-night 
kiss. "Can you give me no message for L.?" I asked. 
Instantly she seemed to pull away at her cap-strings, tore 
off a strip of lace, and pressed it into my hand. There 
ended the interview, and I was convinced, not only from 
internal evidence, but from other indescribable circum- 
stances, that it was no transfiguration of the medium, but 
an independent act of the spirit. I had, before the sitting, 
never once thought of her in connection with her possible 
manifestation ; and that the medium knew nothing of the 
relationship, I have not the slightest reason to doubt. The 
facts cannot be described in a way to be scientifically pre- 
sentable, but they are none the less facts confirmatory to 
the one mortal to whom they were given. I should add 

that the cap-string was recognized by L as a fac-simile 

of those which the individual used to make for herself out 
of lace. The strip was put in a box and placed in a 
drawer : in a few months it had disappeared, how we know 
not, as we have no reason to suppose the box was ever 
meddled with. 

It has been asked, What becomes of the matter of these 
tangible simulacra, when they disappear? It has been said 
that a corpse ought to be left as evidence of the vacation 
of a body, whether extemporized or of gradual growth, by 
a spirit. Now until we know what matter is, and until we 



190 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

can accurately gauge the power of a spirit, it is unwise to 
assume that spirits cannot have the power of dissipating 
extemporized matter, so that the atoms shall be just as 
invisible as they were previous to the formation. The 
amazing celerity with which they do this is no evidence 
against either the fact of formation or of dissipation ; for 
we know that this spirit-power can exercise a superhuman 
celerity in moving things, and in producing long written 
messages. If superhuman power can be exercised in one 
direction, why not in another? To give to this power the 
bad name of magical does not alter the well-attested facts. 
Even-thing that is inexplicable to us maybe stigmatized 
with the same epithet ; and yet all finite causes and effects 
ma}' be strictly within the sphere of the natural. But here 
I should acid that there are investigators who testify to 
having experienced a cadaverous odor at the dematerializa- 
tion of these fugitive forms. 

This theoiy that the spirit is simply exercising its power 
over matter, and is not at all presenting itself as an em- 
bodied entity, entirely does away with the objections raised 
by Weiss. What I may call his contingent objections to 
the belief that the so-called spiritual manifestations are 
from spirits, are thus summed up : 

' ' If you owe your belief in immortality to the assumed 
facts of a spiritual intercourse, your belief is at the mere} 7 
of your assumption. It has not sprung from the vital 
necessity of j'our own soul, it is not a craving which justi- 
fies and demands its future satisfaction, but it is merely an 
opinion derived from a variety of phenomena ; and when 
those which attracted 3'our attention, or when the tricks 
which imposed upon your love of the marvellous, are ex- 
plained away, your immortality is also explained away. 
You did not derive it from a spiritual fact of your own 
consciousness ; you did not build it out of reasonable 
judgments ; 3'ou are at the mercy of what may prove to 
be a delusion. Can a delusion import a spiritual truth 
into the soul? Now, grant that eventually we shall dis- 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 191 

cover that we are immortal, whether we believe it now or 
not ; grant that, in the meantime, it is human and proper 
to wish to believe it and to know it, to see the horizon of 
our life expand, lifting and ennobling all our thoughts, 
justifying our love, and putting before our deeds a bound- 
less career. But ice cannot derive a faith in personal im- 
mortality from occurrences which take place in darkened 
rooms and cabinets. Your opinion derived from them is 
worth no more than the ordinary opinion which is based on 
texts and dogmas. Withdraw the theology, and the truth 
comes toppling down. Withdraw }T>ur phenomena, and, 
for all 3'ou know, annihilation may have been the fate of 
those you loved, and may be your own." 

Here the pith of the whole argument is evolved from a 
mistake. It proceeds from the premise that the facts of 
Spiritualism are assumed by us, and not known. Now the 
experienced Spiritualist knoivs that certain phenomena are 
as much facts, proved by his senses and his common sense, 
as the fact that the sun shines or the grass grows. He has 
no more fear that certain phenomena can ever be proved to 
be tricks, than he has a fear that life itself is a trick, im- 
posed on us by some malignant Power. We need but 
instance the phenomena of clairvo} T ance and of direct 
writing. Any one, who has faithfully, practically, and 
intelligently studied the subject, actually knoivs that these 
take place under conditions which utterly exclude the pos- 
sibility of trick, hallucination, or any abnormal state of 
our consciousness. 

It is not, then, in the least true that our ' ' belief in im- 
mortality "is " at the mercy of an assumption ; " for it is 
a belief — nay, much more than a belief — founded on a 
knowledge of actual facts, supersensual and preterhuman 
in their nature. What if it has not sprung from "a crav- 
ing which justifies and demands its future satisfaction"? 
So long as the belief, or rather the conviction, confirms the 
craving, are not both mutually strengthened ? The intima- 
tion that it is "a love of the marvellous," which leads the 



192 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

serious and well-endowed mind — such minds as Whately, 
Fickle, Wallace, Chambers, Elizabeth Browning, and 
Franz Hoffman — to accept certain phenomena as giving 
evidence of spiritual power, is an unwarrantable accusa- 
tion, which we need not answer. 

When Weiss would narrow clown our anticipations of 
immortality to " the vital necessity" of our own soul — to 
what he calls a "craving," — he leaves out of view the 
important fact that there are many excellent persons who 
do not feel that " vital necessary," or that " craving." Wil- 
liam Humboldt, David F. Strauss, Harriet Martineau, and 
mairy other skeptics, did not feel it 

The Spiritualist does not have to draw on those doubtful 
arguments for immortal^ which depend on the fact that 
the majority of men deduce it from the " emotions," or 
crave it as "a vital necesshry." Such, as we have else- 
where shown, is not the true genesis of the wide-spread 
belief. The inherited " cravings" of the race ma}^ change. 
Those who agree with Strauss and Humboldt may become 
the majorit}*. What, then, becomes of one of the great 
arguments for a future life, which are used by such reason- 
ers as Weiss ? 

I do not regard such an event as possible — ' ' thanks to 
the human heart by which we live ! " Referring to mate- 
rialistic atheism, Professor Tyndall says: "I have noticed 
during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of 
clearness and vigor that this doctrine commends itself to 
my mind ; that in the presence of stronger and healthier 
thought it ever dissolves ancl disappears, as offering no 
solution of the mystery, in which we dwell, ancl of which 
we form a part." And Thomas Shorter, one of the clearest 
expounders of Spiritualism, tells us that G. L. Holyoake, 
the English founder of Secularism, which, like Positivism, 
denies or ignores God and a future life, in a passage of 
great tenderness and pathos, describing the death of his 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 193 

child, avows that even to him a pure and rational faith in 
immortality would be more congenial thau the cold nega- 
tions and dreary platitudes to which his life has been mainly 
devoted. Referring to his daughter, Holyoake says : 
" Yes, a future life, bringing with it the admission to such 
companionship, would be a noble joy to contemplate." 

Thackera} T , who was more than half a Spiritualist, and 
who caused an outcry against himself because he admitted 
into his magazine an article asserting the phenomena, says, 
writing about death: "I know one small philosopher" — 
meaning himself — "who is quite ready to give up these 
pleasures ; quite content (after a pang or two of separation 
from dear friends here) to put his hand into that of the 
summoning angel, and say, ' Lead on, O Messenger of God 
our Father, to the next place whither the divine goodness 
calls us ! ' We must be blindfolded before we can pass, I 
know ; but I have no fear about what is to come any more 
than my children need fear that the love of their father 
should fail them." 

When Weiss saj^s that immortality may be explained 
away as soon as the phenomena are explained away, he 
supposes a case which we do not admit as any more pos- 
sible than that the soul's own faculties should be explained 
away. A fact like clairvoj^ance cannot be explained away ; 
it can be explained only by the theory of the action of a 
spiritual faculty ; and we may say the same of the fact of 
pneumatography. We know that in the nature of things 
they can never be proved to be tricks, any more than the 
genius of a Shakspeare or of a Mozart can be proved to 
be a trick. It is not true that facts like these are not as 
real as any external fact can be ; or that the} T are not built 
u out of reasonable judgments ; " or that we are " at the 
mercy of what may prove a delusion," — unless we assume 
that human life itself is a delusion. 

The climax of Weiss's course of reasoning is, that " we 
13 



194 IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 

cannot derive a faith in personal immortality from occur- 
rences which take place in darkened rooms and cabinets." 
Here he shows the limitation of his acquaintance with the 
real facts. His supreme argument is made null and void 
hy the simple truth. Had he bravely, and without being 
hampered b}^ his preconceived notions, entered into an in- 
vestigation of the actual phenomena, he would soon have 
learned that the most important of them may occur in 
broad da}iight under conditions where fraud is actually 
impossible, and where the knowledge got can never be sur- 
rendered. Try to argue out of his convictions the true 
man, who, b} T many and long-continued experiments, has 
once satisfied himself as to the phenomena of clairvoj'ance 
and direct writing : — Can your ignorance, however subtle 
3-our arguments, be a match for his knowledge 9 

Until 3 f ou can show him that you can read what is writ- 
ten on a tightly-folded, untouched pellet, and teach him 
how to do it himself, by a trick impenetrable to the vigi- 
lance of the most experienced juggler, you can make no 
impression. And this j t ou cannot do, since it is impos- 
sible for you to read without eyes, unless helped by some 
supersensual faculty, as we suppose the medium to be. 

" For as he thinketh in his heart so is he." Solomon's 
wisdom is also the wisdom of Spiritualism. Thought is 
the supreme factor in the universe. Thoughts are not mere 
evanescent nothings. They have an almost objective force. 
They build up and shape the fabric of our minds, as snow- 
flakes make the avalanche. Even the thoughts of delirium, 
though we may not be responsible for them, leave their 
impress. All that we are is the result of what we have 
thought. " If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought," 
sa}^s Buddha, "pain follows him as the wheel follows the 
foot of him who draws it. If a man speaks or acts with a 
pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that 
never leaves him." To drive out bad thoughts b} T good, 



HOSTILE TO RELIGION? 195 

error by truth, and to give our best, most unbiased think- 
ing to the cause of truth, is the road to the gate of 
Heaven. J This is the great admonition which we get from 
Spiritualism. Let us say, in the words of Zoroaster, 
"Come to me, ye high realities! Grant me your immor- 
tality, your duration of possession forever ! " 

The Spiritualist who has not in his own reason an um- 
pire higher than that which any medium can bring, is badly 
'provided, and for him Spiritualism may indeed be "a de- 
lusion and a snare." The late Pocasset horror, where a 
father slaughtered his helpless child in the fanatical notion 
of emulating the faith of Abraham, shows the dangers of 
bibliolatry ; but the dangers of demonolatry are quite as 
great ; and the incautious Spiritualist, accepting as infal- 
lible the message of a spirit, ma} 7 be led into blunders 
hardly less tragical than that of poor Freeman. 

Rightly studied, Spiritualism is the strongest possible 
safeguard against all such superstitions. But if we are to 
accept as gospel the impositions of any spiritual tramp 
who, under the name of St. Paul, Bacon, or Swedenborg, 
may wish to fool us, we had better go back at once to 
the old theology and rest in its bosom. Spiritualism, in 
this its inchoate state, is for clear heads and patient hearts 
and tranquil temperaments. To those who have sur- 
mounted the perplexities, abuses, misconstructions, and 
frauds, the ennui and the disaffections which beset one's 
way to it, and which are all accounted for by eternal laws 
operative both in the sensual and supersensual spheres, it 
is the summit of all earthly content, j I may say of it, in 
the words of Sir Archibald Alison : "It is like the black 
mountain of Bender, in India ; the higher } r ou advance, 
the steeper is the ascent, the darker and more desolate the 
objects with which you are surrounded ; but when you are 
at the summit, the heaven is above your head, and at your 
feet the kingdom of Cashmere." 



196 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PHENOMENAL PROOFS. — FORM-MANIFESTATIONS. CARTESIAN 

ERRORS. THE PAULINE DOCTRINE OF A SPIRITUAL BODY. 

INTUITIONAL TESTIMONY. 

All that is meant by the phrase spirit-materialization is, 
that a spirit has such a power over the elements of matter, 
that he can make animate and palpable the whole or a part 
of a body resembling that which he had at any period of 
his earth-life. Ever since 1848 these partial or full- form 
manifestations have been common. In all ages of the world 
they have been known, though the testimony in regard to 
them has been rejected often by the inexperienced. At the 
manifestations of the celebrated Davenport Brothers as far 
back as 1850, a full spirit-form would not unfrequently 
appear. Their father, Dr. Ira Davenport, whom I have 
questioned on the subject, and of whose good faith no one 
who knows him can doubt, assured me (1879) that the phe- 
nomenon was proved repeatedly in his own house, and 
through the medial attraction of his own sons, under con- 
ditions where fraud or delusion was impossible. There 
have been charges of fraud (by no means conclusive) 
against the i4 brothers,'* but that genuine manifestations 
were given by them cannot now be disputed. 

The late Dr. H. F. Gardner, of Boston, informed me 
that on one occasion, in broad daylight, D. D. Home being 
the medium, he had grasped a detached human hand, which 
melted away as if into impalpable, invisible vapor, and dis- 
appeared in his grasp. 

Dr. John Garth Wilkinson, of London, describes a sim- 



THE SPIRIT-BODY. 197 

ilar experiment with Home. Carrying out the idea of a 
spiritual body infolded within and controlling the physical, 
he says : ' ' Could we behold an apparition of the nervous 
spirit, waving and sweeping through the nerves of the bocty, 
we should see that there are motions and mechanisms which 
transcend the mere external likeness and habitation of life, 
and should know by solemn experience that our organiza- 
tion is an imperishable truth that derides the grave of the 
body." 

The formation of the spirit-hand has been watched under 
conditions scientific, though as yet limited to the experience 
of a few. In the Banner of Light, of August 3, 1878, Mr. 
Austin A. Burnham, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, gives an ac- 
count of eighteen sittings which he had in the summer of 
1875 with the Bangs Sisters, one fifteen years old and the 
other eleven, at their home in Chicago. During the first 
four sittings no hands appeared, but musical instruments 
were played on, and there was slate-writing — all under the 
table. During the next six sittings beautifully formed 
white hands were thrust upward through the aperture of 
the table, showing that they were guided by an intelligent 
power. During the next eight sittings different-sized hands 
and arms of both whites and Indians were projected (often 
simultaneously) from the aperture. 

An interesting feature was the gradual formation of a 
spirit-hand. A slender white cylinder, about three inches 
in length and one-eighth inch diameter, resembling a com- 
mon wax lighting-taper, was thrust upward through the 
aperture. At the next sitting two cylinders were displayed, 
each the same size as the first. At the next sitting three 
cylinders were shown, about the diameter of an ordinary 
lead-pencil, at first perfectly rigid, and seeming to adhere 
one to another. These however soon became flexible, and 
on close inspection were found to be spirit-fingers, with 
perfect joints and tiiry nails. On the next evening " a 



198 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 

complete and finely-formed spirit-hand was presented, 
which had developed to maturity before our e3 T es from the 
little spindles of refined matter that our senses had first 
perceived. It was a demonstration that knowledge and 
power have been given to the spirit in its supermundane 
existence to exercise such control over the molecular forces 
of the universe as to arrange matter in harmonious forms, 
and endow the same with intellectual life."* 

Dr. F. L. H. Willis, who was at one time a medium for 
physical manifestations, to which I have referred on page 
142, writes, May, 1879, in regard to his own medial ex- 
periences : " It is twenty-three years ago that these mate- 
rializations of hands occurred. Did they not occur under 
the great law of form-materialization that has been oper- 
ative through all the ages from the days older than Abra- 
ham, who had three full form-materializations at one time 
in his tent upon the plains of Mamre, down to the mate- 
rialization of Moses and Elias upon the mount in Judea? 
And if a hand, or even a finger, can be materialized, can 
the workings of the law be limited to that, so that it shall 
be pronounced impossible for the full form to stand out in 
the perfection of human proportions ? Is not the one the 
sure prophecy of the other ? " 

Truly I see no way of answering this question except by 
admitting that the spirit-hand makes possible the full-form 
manifestation, appropriately clothed. Often these hands 
would show some deformity or defect by way of identifying 
the spirit manifesting ; and Dr. Willis says, referring to his 
own mediumship : 

' ' On one occasion a gentleman present drew a knife from 
his pocket with a long, keen blade, and taking no one into 
his counsel, watching his opportunity, pierced with a vio- 

* The author has himself both seen and felt the spirit-hand repeatedly under 
conditions that seemed to preclude both imposture and hallucination. He has 
also seen the hand write messages, indicating clairvoyant power. 



THE SPIRIT-BODY. 199 

lent blow one of the psychic hands. The medium uttered 
a shriek of pain. The sensation was precisely as if the 
knife had passed through his hand. The gentleman 
sprang to his feet exultant, thinking he had made a most 
triumphant expose of trickery, and fully expected to find the 
medium's hand pierced and bleeding. To his utter chagrin 
and amazement there was no trace of a scratch even upon 
either hand of the medium ; and 3-et to him the sensation 
was precisely as if the knife had passed through muscle and 
tendon, and the sensation of pain and soreness remained 
for hours. 

" On another occasion a gentleman was present who, 
a year before, had lost, as he supposed forever, a beloved 
wife. He had no faith in immortality, and to him death 
was indeed the blackness of an endless night, and the grave 
an abyss that had swallowed forever his most precious 
treasure. A hand was formed and placed in his, and he 
started with the exclamation in thrilling tones of 'Oh, my 
God ! ' and burst into tears. He recognized the hand of 
his wife, and felt upon two of the fingers facsimiles of the 
betrothal and marriage rings he had placed thereon." 

Augustine Calmet, author of the well-known " Dictiona- 
ry of the Bible," was born near Commercy, in France, in 
1672, and died in 1757, " greatly esteemed," says the Brit- 
ish National Cyclopaedia, "both for his learning and mod- 
eration." Calmet well knew, what our modern phenomena 
have abundantly confirmed, namely, that spirits can take 
on objective forms of different degrees of materiality ; some 
so attenuated as to be invisible to the normal sense of 
mortals ; some, though still invisible, probably sufficiently 
near to the material to have caused, in our day, an im- 
pression on the photographer's sensitive plate, which it is 
well known will be impressed by objects not visible to the 
human sense ; and some that can be seen only by persons 
in a state of high clairvoyance. The proof is in the follow- 
ing passage from Calmet : 

"It is necessary to study and distinguish the apparitions 
during sleep from those that appear during your wakeful 



200 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 

state ; — studying apart, also, those apparitions in solid 
bodies, that talk and walk and eat and drink, and the same 
with regard to those that appear as nebulous and airy." 

Here it is evident that the great fact of materialization 
was known to the erudite author of ' ' The Dictionary of the 
Bible ; " < and he also justifies the belief of the lower races in 
' ' a filmy bodj T " for the spirit, by showing that the spirit 
may regulate at will the degree of molecular attenuation in 
his assumed body. 

Of the fact of materialization to such a degree of density 
that the spirit "can talk and walk and eat and drink, " 
Calmet has evidently no doubt. It is all in strict con- 
formity with our present facts, together with what is related 
of the reappearance of Jesus. In the common phenomenon 
of the spirit-hand, moved by intelligence, lie all the poten- 
cies of the full-form manifestations. Given the spirit-hand, 
and all the rest is made credible. 

Should any one want testimon}^ more remote than that 
of Calmet to the fact of a spiritual body, he may learn 
that in Egypt, two thousand } T ears before our era, though 
the unknown God and Lord of life was worshipped under 
various names and attributes, the popular religion and 
household cultus had Spiritualism for its basis. In Lon- 
don, on the 15th of April, 1879, in a lecture at Stein way 
Hall, Mr. Le Page Renouf (not known as a Spiritualist) 
undertook to set forth the results of the latest and fullest 
researches into the civilization and religion of Ancient 
Eg} T pt. These results, it must be observed, are no matter 
of surmise or inference from a few disputed passages or 
obscure texts. Five thousand years ago the Egyptians left 
their belief written at large in all conceivable forms, from 
royal edicts to private pra} T ers and memoranda. 

A principal and pervading tenet among them was the 
double nature of man. Every human being had his double, 
wraith, or astral spirit, as much a part of him as his fleshly 



THE SPIRIT-BODY. 201 

frame — " at times , and in certain conditions, independently 
visible and palpable.'" The Egyptian name for this was 
Kar, a word exactly corresponding to the Latin imago and 
the Greek eiduXov. Through this mystic companion, sep- 
arate individual existence was continued and carried on 
after the dissolution of earth-life, and the communication 
with it by survivors formed the greater part of that ances- 
tral worship and reverence for the dead that so remarkably 
distinguished Eg} T ptian social life. Possession and obses- 
sion were familiar and recognized phenomena, and scien- 
tifically dealt with. In the Ishtar tablets (B. C. 2250) 
there is a glimpse of materialization in the line : i ' The 
spirit of Heabani, like glass, transparent from the earth 
arose." 

Among physicists the question ivJiat is matter? will be 
answered in different ways, according to their affinity with 
this or that school of thought. Strict materialists, like 
Buchner, Haeckel, and Vogt, prefer an expression which 
will not credit* matter with any spiritual potency whatever. 
They would have it appear that mind is derived from the 
mechanical action of purely material atoms — not the soul- 
atoms of Democritus, nor the monad of Leibnitz, nor the 
mind-stuff of Professor W. K. Clifford — but something in 
which there is neither life nor the promise of life. The con- 
sideration that thinking cannot be a property of matter, 
unless the conception of matter be so enlarged that it no 
longer answers the purposes of the atheistic hypothesis, 
has no weight with these extremists. 

To both classes of minds the crowning phenomenon of 
Spiritualism, the full-form manifestation of a human figure, 
with appropriate clothing, all improvised apparently out of 
nothingness, is a scandal and an impossibilit}' ; something 
too incredible for any amount of human testimony to verify. 
Equally incredible to them are the phenomena of levitation, 
pneumatography, and the independent movement of objects. 



202 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 

But all these phenomena, which to the average scientific 
conception are in direct violation of the laws of nature, 
are in truth attributable to the intervention of higher laws 
which do not at all contravene any natural law, but which, 
being unknown, assume in popular estimation the rank of 
magical miracles. 

Thus the levitation, or lifting, of a human being, which I 
have often witnessed, though abundantly confirmed in Cath- 
olic annals, is pronounced absurd because it is a violation 
of the law of gravity. And when we reply, " Nay ! it is 
in no sense a violation ; an invisible, impalpable power is 
at work, and causes the lifting," we are told b}^ the phy- 
sicist, who trusts to his " deductive reasoning," that we 
are " the victim of a prepossession," or, as Carpenter ex- 
presses it, " have surrendered our common sense to a dom- 
inant idea." 

Saint Theresa, a nun in a convent in Spain, was often 
raised into the air in the sight of all the sisterhood. Lord 
Orrery and Mr. Valentine Greatrak both informed Henry 
More and Joseph Glanvil that at Lord Cornway's house, at 
Ragley, in Ireland, a gentleman's butler, in their presence 
and in broad daylight, rose into the air and floated about 
the room above their heads. Butler, in his " Lives of the 
Saints," sa} T s that man}- such facts are related by persons 
of undoubted veracity, who testify that they themselves were 
eye-witnesses of them. 

The Rev. Win. Fishbough, of New York, a veteran in 
the cause of Spiritualism, writes (July, 1876,) : " To my 
own positive knowledge, based upon an actual occurrence, 
these materializations can take place without a cabinet, or 
any other medium than mj'self, and that, too in the pri- 
vate solitude of my own chamber." 

Charles Bonnet (1720-1793) the great Swiss naturalist, 
believed that man's future body exists already with the 
body visible ; and he believed that science would some day 



THE SPIRIT-BODY. 203 

have instruments which would enable it to detect this body, 
formed as it probably is of the elements of ether or of light. 

" Let us distrust," says Chaseray, " our imperfect senses, 
since there are so many substances which we can neither 
feel nor see. Let us not be precipitate in denying the dual- 
ity of the human being because the scalpel of the anatomist 
cannot reveal to our sight a principle eminently subtile. 
Man is not driven to annihilation even under the bypothe- 
sis of materiality." Chaseray thinks that the spirit-body 
may some day be proved by science. 

By its nature and in its normal state the spirit-body is 
invisible, and it has that property in common with many 
fluids which we know exist, and yet which we have never 
seen ; but it can also, the same as other fluids, undergo 
modifications that render it perceptible to the sight, whether 
by a sort of condensation or by a change in the molecular 
disposition ; it then appears to us under a vaporous form. 
By further condensation the spirit-bod}" may acquire the 
properties of -solidity and tangibilitj' ; but it can instanta- 
neously resume its ethereal and invisible state. 

We can understand this state by comparing it with that 
of invisible vapor, which can pass to a state of visible fog, 
then become liquid, then solid, and vice versa. These dif- 
ferent states of the spirit-body are the result of the will of 
the spirit, and not an exterior physical cause, as in our 
gases. 

"It is an extravagant conjecture of mine," sa}^s Locke, 
u that spirits can assume to themselves bodies of different 
bulk, figure, and conformation of parts." Locke's extrava- 
gant conjectures are sometimes better than the sober hy- 
potheses of other philosophers. 

Science has to hypothecate the intermediary ether to ac- 
count for the passage of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, 
gravity, through space. Wiry may we not quite as reason- 
ably hypothecate an intermediary, partaking both of matter 



204 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 

and spirit, through which an Infinite Spirit may act in con- 
trolling the universe ? The grounds for the latter hypoth- 
esis are quite as ample as those for the former ; and if we 
fortify it by our admitted facts, we have a broader basis 
for the spiritual than for the accepted material hypothesis. 

Dr. John W. Draper, of the University of New York, 
has been quoted by Professor Tyndall as good scientific 
authority. But in his "Human Physiology," referring to 
the human body, Draper remarks : ' ' There animates the 
machine a self-conscious and immortal principle — the 
soul. ... In the most enlarged acceptation, it would fall 
under the province of physiology to treat of this immortal 
principle." Here Dr. Draper plainly intimates that there 
must be a psycho-physiological science. 

Among modern German philosophers, Baader, Hoffman, 
Ulrici, Wirth, Wagner, Fechner, Beneke, Dressier teach, 
though in different ways, substantially the theory of a spir- 
itual body. Ulrici believes in the non-atomic character of 
the soul's organism, describing it as "a fluid-like substance, 
undivided, continuous, simple, penetrating all parts of the 
bod} T ." Beneke teaches that the faculties are the elements 
of the substance of the soul itself ; that they are not inhe- 
rent in a substratum, distinct from themselves, inasmuch 
as a thing is only the sum of its own combined forces. 
Wagner believes in an " individual, permanent, psychical 
substance." Baader, Franz Hoffman, and I. H. Fichte 
are in harmony with the teachings of Spiritualism in regard 
to the spiritual body. As I have already shown, we may 
also claim the illustrious Kant as accepting the probabilities 
of an actual inter-communication between the spirit-world 
and ours, in the remark, "It may be proved yet that the 
human soul, even in this earthly life, is in indissolubly con- 
nected communion with all the immaterial existences of the 
spirit- world." 

Our clairvo3*ants are unanimous in asserting this inner 






THE SPIRIT-BODY. 205 

fluidic organism. Mechanical science gives a reason for it. 
Mr. Gillingham, an English manufacturer of artificial 
limbs, in Chard, Somersetshire, argues, from the phenom- 
ena with which he has become acquainted in the way of his 
profession, that there must be a spiritual body co-existing 
with the physical. The sensations often felt where the 
amputated limb ought to be, is one of the facts he adduces. 
And Mtiller, in his Handbuch der Physiologie, remarks : 
"Professor Valentine has observed that individuals who 
are the subjects of congenital imperfection, or absence of 
the extremities, have, nevertheless, the internal sensations 
of such limbs in their perfect state." 

"If," says Miss A. B. Blackwell, " we must call in the 
action of a refined class or classes of matter to explain the 
transmission of all the more rapid and subtle forms of en- 
erg} T , as electricity and gravity, then the supposition that 
every mind may have a more permanent, ethereal body, 
which mediates between it and its grosser organism, cannot 
involve a shadow of scientific absurdity. It even becomes 
highly probable." 

"We are logically constrained," say Stewart and Tait, 
in their "Unseen Universe," "if we regard the principle 
of continuity and the doctrine of imrnortalhty as both true, 
to admit the existence of some frame or organ not of this 
earth, which survives dissolution" ; and they add: "It is 
possible that there have been, and that there are, occasional 
manifestations of this spiritual nature." Not only occa- 
sional, but very frequent manifestations, it might be said. 

"I could multiply citations to infinity," saj^s Guizot, 
" proving that in the first century of our era, the materialhYv 
of the soul was an opinion not only permitted but dominant." 

Pliny the younger, a born skeptic, admits, but with evi- 
dent reluctance, that phantoms of the dead reappear to 
man, and that events occur prophetic of an inevitable 
doom, which wise men might sometimes interpret correctly. 



206 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 

Mr. T. P. Barkas, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, a scientific 
investigator with whom I have had some correspondence, 
writes, May 3, 1875 : 

' ' I have experimented and investigated under every 
kind of reasonable test that my ingenuity could devise ; in 
my own private rooms, in the private rooms of personal 
friends, in public rooms, and in the private rooms of me- 
diums. I have examined the rooms with utmost care ; 
have personalty fitted up the recesses for the reception of 
mediums ; have personally provided every thing connected 
with the seances, and am certain that no arrangement for 
trick was in the room. I have tied, sealed, nailed, and 
held the mediums in almost ever} T possible manner. I have 
undressed the medium, and re-dressed him in clothes of my 
own providing. And notwithstanding all tests and all 
precautions, phenomena have taken place that are utterly 
inexplicable by reference to any known physical or psjxho- 
logical law. All this I have done with the cold eye and 
stead}^ pulse of a scientist. I am prepared to give £100 to 
any man or woman who by trick can produce similar phe- 
nomena under similar conditions." 

Again he writes : ' ' The phenomena appeal not to one 
sense merely, but to all the senses. Sight, hearing, smell, 
taste, and touch are all called into requisition during the 
course of our seances. Mesmeric subjects can be placed 
under illusion, but when relieved from the influence of the 
operator they are conscious of the change ; such is not the 
case at seances ; the sitters are not conscious of having 
been under an}' influence whatever." 

Mr. Barkas gives an account (May 14, 1875) of some 
remarkable seances with the boy, William Petty, under 
perfect test conditions. The boy stripped himself abso- 
lutely naked. He was then re-dressed in dark clothes 
which Mr. Barkas had provided. Not a white or light 
article of any kind was there on the lad's person. Mr. 
Barkas had himself provided the cabinet ; excluding every 
thing that had the appearance of whiteness. Under these 



THE SPIRIT-BODY. 207 

conditions, a figure draped in white, about four feet high, 
came out, moved about the room, and cut from its gar- 
ments a piece, seven inches by two and an eighth, which 
was found to be very white lawn. There were present two 
ladies and seven gentlemen, who were willing, if required, 
to authenticate this statement. 

In the London Spiritualist of March 7, 1879, will be 
found an account by Mr. John Mould, of Newcastle-on- 
Tjme, of the sawing of a piece of flooring deal, twenty 
inches long, six inches wide, and five-eighths of an inch 
thick. An ordinary hand-saw was used ; Miss Wood was 
the medium, and, as she had been once charged with 
fraud, the conditions were made perfect, she being in full 
sight of the spectators and known not to have moved. 
After describing the success of the phenomena, Mr. Mould 
says: "I unhesitatingly affirm, after a persistent investi- 
gation of nearly six years, — which means attendance, on 
an average, of two sittings weekly at nearly six hundred 
seances, — that the statements I have just made are, in my 
judgment, statements of fact, however antecedently im- 
probable they may appear." Mr. Mould considers the two 
theories in explanation of the problem : one that of the 
activity of a spirit external to the medium, and the other, 
of which he remarks: "Assuming the phenomena to be 
produced by the soul of the medium making a sortie out of 
its dark cottage, the fact of action at a distance is the un- 
foldment of a possibility making a future life at least more 
conceivable, and to that extent is a light, and therefore 
more likely to influence our ideas on a future life than if 
we had no light at all." 

Dr. J. M. Gully, formerly of Great Malvern, England, 
a thoroughly experienced plrvsician and a careful investi- 
gator, wrote me, under date of July 20, 1874: "To the 
special question which you put regarding my experiences 
of the materialization of the spirit-form with Miss Cook's 



208 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 

mediumship, I must reply, that after two } T ears' examina- 
tion of the fact and numerous seances, I have not the 
smallest doubt, and have the strongest conviction, that 
such materialization takes place, and that not the slightest 
attempt at trick or deception is fairly attributable to any 
one who assisted at Miss Cook's seances." 

From the facts here brought together, it may be inferred 
that the spirit-body is not a mere Irypothesis : it is proved 
by the phenomena and the inductions of Spiritualism ; by 
the objective appearance of spirits themselves in extempo- 
rized bodies ; by the testimony of clairvoyants who can 
see spirits, and by the testimony of the spirits, who claim 
not only a super-ethereal organism, human in its form, but 
the power of assuming visible bodies like those which, at 
different stages of the earth-life, they had while here ; by 
the phenomena of somnambulism and clairvoyance giving 
evidence of spiritual senses, for as the bodily senses imply 
their object, so do the spiritual senses imply theirs, and are 
prophecies of an endless life ; by all the analogies which 
reason and experience supply ; and by the belief of men in 
all ages and climes — a belief founded on the actual reap- 
pearance of deceased relatives and friends. 

Add to these considerations the facts of a manifold con- 
sciousness, pointing to a complex but unique organism ; 
also the marvels of memory, in which faculty impressions 
inhere and persist which are inexplicable under the theory 
of materialism, involving as it does a constant flux and 
removal of the molecules of the organs of thought. Only 
the existence of a spiritual body can account for these 
things ; though I am aware this has been denied. 

The anthropological conception, for which I am indebted 
to the facts of spiritualism, is that of a trichotomy of 
physical body, spirit-body (or soul) , and spirit, — a trinity 
of principles, plrysical, psjxho-physiological, and spiritual, 
all proceeding from the Infinite Force, but the last, like 



THE SPIRIT-BODY. 209 

God himself, inscrutable. In this notion I am supported 
b} T the belief of the early Christians, as it appears in their 
writings up to the fourth century. I also have the concur- 
rence of Lord Bacon, who says: "Two different emana- 
tions of souls are manifest in the first creation : the one 
(the rational soul, or the spirit,) proceeding from the 
breath of God ; the other (the sensitive soul, or spirit- 
body,) from the elements." The spirit, he tells us, is sci- 
entifically incognizable ; but the sensitive soul (spirit-body) 
whose "substance even," he tells us, "may be justly in- 
quired into," must be allowed "a corporeal substance, 
attenuated by heat and rendered invisible, as a subtle 
breath, or aura, of a flamy and aiiy nature (electro- 
luminous), and diffused through the whole foody." * 

Such is not only the early Christian belief, but such, so 
far as relates to the spirit-bod} T , is the so-called animism 
of the barbarous tribes. It is consistent also with the 
views of both Plato and Aristotle. In the progress of 
philosophical speculation this simple idea, explaining so 
many of the phenomena that have puzzled rnataphysicians 
as to how an immaterial, unextended principle can act 
upon a plrysical bod}', was superseded by a doctrine which 
identified spirit-body and spirit in substance, and distin- 
guished them only in function. Aquinas, and after him 
Calvin, pronounced in favor of this dualistic rendering ; 
but it was chiefly through the influence of Descartes that 
the belief in a psychical organism or spirit-bod}^, distinct 
from the physical, was ruled out of philosophy, literature, 
and religion. Then began to arise the clamor, still kept 
up, against the "gross materialism" of the Pauline doc- 
trine of a spiritual body ; and hence the scornful defama- 
tion of Spiritualism as being a worse materialism than that 
which it would displace. 

* The passages in parenthesis here are not in Bacon's text. 

14 



210 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 

The rejection by Descartes of the notion of two emana- 
tions of souls, a sensitive (spirit-body) and a rational 
(spirit) , compelled him to confound the two principles ; 
but this he could not do without making the only soul left 
an indefinable, abstract principle, having neither extension, 
form, nor conceivable substance. Thus he could give us 
no assurance of the continuous life of man ; he destroyed 
the etymological signification of the word immortal (not 
dying) ; and he referred us to revelation alone for our 
grounds of belief in a future state. In all this he was a 
retrograde teacher ; he reversed the wisdom of the past ; 
he fortified the unscientific doctrine of a resurrection of 
the physical body ; and he blinded theologians and philos- 
ophers generally to the import of the great fact announced 
by Paul, that there is not only a natural but a spiritual 
body. 

The attempt to reconcile with the opinion that the soul 
pervades our whole physical organization, the Cartesian 
notion that there is no extended psychical entity, — that 
the mind (which Descartes makes the only soul) has no 
substratum for inherence, — has been the despair and con- 
fusion of philosophy up to this time. I have already 
instanced the eminent contemporary philosophers in Ger- 
many who have rejected or supplemented the Cartesian 
theory. They have postulated a continuity of life, made 
possible by the presence of a principle in the human organ- 
ization, occult and impervious to the scalpel, but actual, 
like the potency of the clnysalis in the worm. Philosophers 
like Fichte and Hoffman were first attracted by Spiritual- 
ism because the} 7 had independently arrived b} 7 their own 
inductions and deductions at the fundamental doctrine it 
corroborates. 

The Spencerian philosophy, as expounded bj T Mr. John 
Fiske, who gives to it the epithet cosmic, adheres to the 
Cartesian notion of the soul. Indeed, Mr. Spencer told 



THE SPIRIT-BODY. 211 

Professor Gunning that he rejected Spiritualism on a priori 
grounds, by which he doubtless meant that he regarded 
certain preconceptions of his own on the subject as having 
the force of axioms. But there are signs that the more 
scientific German philosophy is destined to reinstate the 
Pauline doctrine of a spiritual body. 

I have before me an American volume * of recent date, 
in which the author, Dr. "Walter, carrying out the views of 
I. H. Fichte and Ulrici, ably combats the religious and 
metaplrysical objections to the doctrine of the soul's exten- 
sion. In his language, let it be understood, soul covers 
the whole region of mind, and he at times uses the word 
indiscriminately. He makes no sign that he accepts the 
phenomena of Spiritualism. His arguments are mainly 
metaplrysical, and not plrysiological. He saj T s : 

" The assertion that the soul is not extended is exactly 
balanced by the no more dogmatic assertion that the soul is 
extended. To conceive of the soul as coextensive, and in 
union, with the whole nervous S3 T stem, is no more difficult 
than to conceive of it as unextended and confined, or not, 
to a particular part ; and certainty much less difficult than 
to conceive of it as unextended and yet in immediate con- 
nection with all parts." 

He tells us that to attribute extension to mind is indeed 
ascribing to Spirit a property of Body ; but to have one 
property in common is not identhvy. Space is extended, 
and in that respect is like matter, and yet certainly is not 
matter. The two existences are still substantially different. 
If, then, between mental and material substances, both 
being considered as having extension, as great difference 
exists as between space and matter, why should the fas- 
tidious Cartesian be disturbed ? The two may possess one 
common attribute, but it cannot make them the same. It 

* " The Perception of Space and Matter, by Rev. John Estep Walter, Prin- 
cipal of the Classical and Scientific Institute, Mt. Pleasant, Pa. Roston : Estes 
& Lauriat, 1879." 



212 PHENOMENAL PROOFS. 

neither materializes mind nor spiritualizes matter, but 
leaves them as radically distinct as could be desired. 

There are a number of well-known facts pertaining to 
the growth and generation of the lower animals, which Dr. 
Walter instances as strongly corroborating this doctrine of 
psychical extension. If the polype or certain ring- worms 
be cut into pieces, each of the pieces will, in a brief time, 
develop into a complete organism like the original whole. 
This fact seems to put it be} T ond question that the sensitive 
principle of the original, undivided organism extends to all 
its parts. 

Philosophers, who oppose the doctrine of psychical ex- 
tension, at the same time make admissions which favor it. 
Sir William Hamilton tells us that "the first condition of 
the possibility of an immediate, intuitive, or real percep- 
tion of external things, which our consciousness assures us 
that we possess, is the immediate connection of the cogni- 
tive principle with every part of the corporeal organism." 

Mansel says of the soul that it ' ' must be regarded as 
present in all the sensitive organs alike." He also has this 
remarkable sentence: " Sensation is not an affection of 
mind alone, nor of matter alone, but of an . animated or- 
ganism, i. e., of mind and matter united." What does 
such an utterance amount to, if not to a recognition of a 
spirit-body as a necessary nexus between spirit and earth- 
body? And xei Mansel is a Cartesian. 

President Noah Porter affirms that the soul " occupies," 
"pervades" "animates," is "united with," and "con- 
nected with " the extended sensorium or organism ; that 
' ' in sensation proper the soul knows itself as united with 
the extended sensorium." 

"Thus it seems perfectly clear," says Dr. Walter (to 
whom I am indebted for these quotations), " that the Ham- 
iltonian theory of the perception of the extended impera- 
tively requires that the soul be extended ; and that for its 



THE SPIRIT-BODY. 213 

advocates to deny extension is to make their theory a 
superstructure without a foundation, — a puerile assump- 
tion. . . . Why they, or any thinkers, after they have ex- 
plicitly taught that the mind pervades, or is in immediate 
connection with, all parts of the extended bodily organism, 
should find any difficulty in accepting the proposition that 
the soul is extended, is wholly incomprehensible." 

The convictions of seers, mediums, and intuitionalists 
generally, in favor of a spiritual organism involving the 
universal presence of the mind in the physical body, may 
be fairly accepted as confirming the philosophical views of 
Ulrici, Walter, Hoffman, and others on this particular sub- 
ject, and are an earnest that the Cartesian dogma has had 
its cla} T , and must soon give way to the re-establishment of 
the old Pauline doctrine, as affirmed by Spiritualism. 
Thus does the most advanced philosophical analysis come 
to the support of the great generalization from our facts, 
that there is in man a psychical organism, released from 
the physical by death, and carrying the guaranty not only 
of his continuous life, but of his unimpaired individuality 
in all its essentials. 

"Even here in this life," says Cudworth, "our bocty is, 
as it were, twofold, interior and exterior ; we having, be- 
sides the grossly tangible bulk of our outward body, another 
interior spiritual bod3 T , which latter is not put into the 
grave with the other." 

" The soul," says Lavater, " on leaving its earthly frame 
is immediately clothed in a spiritual frame withdrawn from 
the material. The soul itself, during its earth-life, perfects 
the faculties of the spiritual body by means of which it will 
apprehend, feel, and act in its new existence." 



214 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 



CHAPTER VII. 

MESMERISM. INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. COGNATE PHE- 
NOMENA. MRS. MOWATT. MISS FANCHER. MISS REY- 
NOLDS. PREVISION. — PROOFS OF SPIRITUAL POWER. 

The facts of mesmerism are too well known to require 
recapitulation. Introduced by Mesmer to the Parisian 
world in 1778, they were extended in 1784 by Puysegur, 
who was the first in modern times to report the fact of mes- 
meric somnambulism and clairvoj^ance. In 1825 the French 
Academy of Medicine appointed a commission, of which 
Magendie, Fouquier, Leroux, Husson, and seven other 
eminent physicians were members, to investigate and re- 
port on the facts. They occupied more than five years in 
their labors. Their report, presented in 1831, gives a clear 
account of their experiments. They were well guarded 
against charlatanism and fraud, for they say that " it is only 
by a most attentive examination, the severest care, and by 
numerous and varied trials, that one can escape illusion." 

They admit the most important of the phenomena, and 
say in regard to clairvoyance : " We saw two somnambules 
who distinguished, their eyes being closed, the objects 
placed before them : they have designated without touching 
them, the color and value of cards ; they have read writ- 
ten words, also several lines of books. This phenomenon 
took place even when the opening of the eyelids was kept 
exactly closed by the fingers." 

Cuvier, the great naturalist, admitted the phenomena (in 
his " Analomie Comparie" vol. 2, p. 117) ; so did La- 
place (in his " Traite Analytique du Calcul des ProbabiMUs) . 






INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 215 

Gall, Spurzheim, Hahnemann, Hufeland, Sir ¥m. Ham- 
ilton, and a long list of eminent men of scienee, were 
also believers in the mesmeric phenomena. Lacordaire, 
the famous French theologian (1802-1861), says: "The 
somnambule appears to know things which he was ignorant 
of before his sleep, and which he forgets on the instant of 
awaking." 

The compound word somnambulism (sleep-walking) is an 
inapt one to designate the various phenomena that come 
under it ; but our present science has to use it in the ab- 
sence of a better term. As the phenomena are indicative 
of supersensual powers in the human subject, they properly 
come in to illustrate and confirm the theory of Spiritualism. 
My first acquaintance with the facts of induced somnambu- 
lism dates back to the year 1836. Dr. Collyer, a young 
English physician, happened to be in Boston, and gave some 
public experiments in mesmerism at the Masonic Temple. 
I saw enough to convince me that they were not wholly il- 
lusoiy. Subsequently I witnessed the experiments of Mr. 
Peale, at his 'Museum in Broadwa}^ New York. In both 
the subjects I had seen, the lucidity had not advanced to 
that degree of high consciousness which seems to be a rise 
upon that of the normal state. Still it was evident that 
the somnambulists in both cases were sensitive to the un- 
expressed will of the mesmerizer, and many curious phe- 
nomena, indicating a faculty that could not be explained 
by materialism, were developed. 

In 1840 I became acquainted with Mrs. A. C. Mowatt 
(1820-1869), who afterwards won distinction on the stage, 
wrote novels and plays, and "The Autobiography of an 
Actress," and, some years after her first husband's death, 
married Mr. Ritchie, of Richmond, Va. Dr. Channing, a 
bachelor physician, in whose house on Broadway, New 
York, I had taken rooms, attended her professionally for 
an affection which finally resulted in congestion of the 



216 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

brain. He tried the effect of mesmerism upon her, and 
gradually she developed into quite a remarkable somnam- 
bule. One day when she and her husband were at Dr. 
C.'s rooms I happened to be present. He began to read 
to her from one of his addresses. I sat near, and hiding 
my face with a pamphlet, as if to shelter it from the light, 
thought I would test the mesmeric theory of the operation 
of the will without contact. The effect upon Mrs. Mowatt 
was almost instantaneous. The balls of her eyes rolled up, 
and her eyelids drooped ; whereupon I suspended the action 
of rny will and she was herself again. I tried this several 
times till I satisfied myself there was a positive effect from 
my volition, unaided by any sign, look, or movement visible 
to the subject. At last Dr. C, looking up from his read- 
ing, detected from the appearance of her eyes what was 
going on, and charged me with it. I had to plead guilty. 

Some weeks afterwards, as Mrs. Mowatt grew worse, 
and he was obliged to leave the city, he urged me to take 
his place in treating her mesmerically. With reluctance I ac- 
cepted the responsibility, supposing it would last only a few 
days. Then there commenced a series of experiences which 
to me were new and interesting. By a few passes of my hand 
without contact I could throw her into what seemed a pro- 
found state of coma, rarely lasting more than a minute, from 
which she would emerge in a state of consciousness, which, 
though it commanded all the contents of her normal state, 
was evidently distinct and superior. Her eyeballs were 
rolled up and the lids drooped loosely, though when she 
became animated in conversation the lids would close tight- 
ly, and her countenance become more expressive than the 
open eyes could have made it. 

That the subject, through some psychologizing power in- 
dependent of the mesmerizer, might have produced this 
state is highly probable. We see, in the case of trance- 
mediums, that b} T a sort of self-magnetization they may pass 



INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 217 

into a state of consciousness of which the} T cany no recol- 
lection back into the normal state. But the process of 
mesmerization by a second person is to some subjects, ac- 
cording to their idiosyncrasies, an important prerequisite. 
They may at the same time be so constituted as to exer- 
cise a volition quite independent of the mesmerizer should 
he attempt an influence to which they might object. Mrs. 
Mowatt was always the dictator in her lucid state ; she 
would predict crises in her disease with wonderful accu- 
racy, and take all responsibility both from mesmerizer and 
pljysician as to prescribing for her case. Indeed the phy- 
sician's office soon became a sinecure. She, in her abnor- 
mal state, was alwaj's her own physician, and her own 
despotic ruler, showing absolute confidence in all her pre- 
scriptions. 

Still she seemed acutely sensitive to the mesmerizer's 
unexpressed will, especially in her normal state. While 
somnambulic she wished me to give her the power of pass- 
ing from her abnormal to her normal state, and to effect 
this, directed me to magnetize her ring, so that in my ab- 
sence she could, by pulling it off, pass into her usual con- 
dition. 

Braid's theory that the phenomena in mesmerism depend 
on the physical and psychical condition of the patient, and 
not at all on- the volition or passes of the operator throwing 
out a magnetic fluid, or exciting into activity some mys- 
tical universal fluid or medium, may be true in much that it 
asserts, but it is wrong in much that it denies. The sensi- 
tiveness of the patient to the undemonstrated volition of 
the operator (a fact I have repeatedly tested) is a proof 
that there is an actual communication of will- force produc- 
ing objective effects. This cannot be denied by any expe- 
rienced student. Mr. Braid found that he could develop 
the mesmeric phenomena by causing a person to sit still, 
and simply directing his attention, by means of the eyesight, 



218 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

to some particular object, as a lancet-case or a cork ; but 
he leaves out of consideration entirely the question how 
far his own unexpressed will may have been a factor in 
producing the result which he was expecting and uncon- 
sciously helping on. 

As for the assertions of Dr. Hammond and Dr. Beard 
that the phenomena can all be accounted for by their the- 
ories of epilepsy, hallucination, &c, the studies and ex- 
periences of more than forty years have convinced me that 
the^y are wrong. Their explanations are wholly inapplica- 
ble to a case like that of Mrs. Mo watt. In her abnormal 
state there was that perfect self-poise, intelligence, and self- 
control, which made the idea of a merely morbid develop- 
ment ridiculous. She seemed to look down upon all the 
contents of her normal memoiy as from a superior position. 

If I put anything hot or cold in my mouth she would at 
once recognize it, unless her attention was directed to some- 
thing else at the moment. There was a quick sympathy 
with all nry moods and physical conditions, and } T et she was 
supremely and independently conscious all the time, and 
would reason upon the phenomena, describe them, philoso- 
phize upon them, and oppose my own opinions with an abil- 
itj far transcending that which she exhibited in her normal 
state. 

For two years I had an opportunity of studying the phe- 
nomena in her case, almost daily, in all their variety. Never 
was there the slightest symptom in all that time of any 
attempt at deception. In variably, in her abnormal state, 
the appearance of the e}~es alone .was a sufficient proof of 
the peculiarity of the condition. Never would any occur- 
rence startling or unusual cause the eyes, when she was 
somnambulic, to assume their normal aspect. Always the 
eyelids hung loose, with the balls rolled up, or else would 
be tightly closed. Her husband was her constant attend- 
ant, and took an intelligent interest in the phenomena. But 



INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 219 

the state of his health did not allow him to exert the mes- 
meric influence himself. 

On one occasion, by her own direction when somnam- 
bulic, she was kept so two weeks, without returning once 
to her normal state. As we resided quite near each other 
on Broadway, I had frequent opportunities of visiting her. 
Her last recollections in her normal state were of seeing 
Broadway heaped with snow ; while a rose-bush on a stand 
,in her parlor had on it a bud } T et green. When, a fort- 
night afterwards, I suddenly removed the mesmeric influ- 
ence, brought her back to her natural state, and led her, first 
to the window, so that she saw that the piles of snow had 
disappeared, and then to the rose-bush, so that she saw the 
bud had become a flower, she — having no consciousness 
whatever of the lapse of time, supposing that she had been 
" asleep " not more than an hour or two — became wildly 
agitated and almost frantic. I saw that I had made a mis- 
take in not preparing her for the change. This I could 
easily have done by giving her what she called an ' ' ordina- 
tion " to carry the remembrance of the experiences of the 
last fourteen days into her waking state. My only resource 
was to put m} 7 hands on her head and force her back into 
her abnormal state. This I accomplished at last, after 
much opposition on her part and much effort of volition on 
my own. After a somewhat prolonged state of profound 
coma, the well-known change in her countenance and the 
unconscious, child-like smile, admonitory of the coming of 
her second and higher self, to whom while somnambulic she 
had given the name of the " gipsjV appeared, and, after a 
breath of relief, she took my hand and said, " You should 
have known better than to wake her so suddenly. You 
should have guessed that the changes to which you were to 
introduce her would bewilder and astound her. Now put 
your hands on her head and ordain that she shall be recon- 
ciled to the change, and take it as a matter of course." I 



220 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

obeyed the direction, and the "simpleton," as the normal 
self was called, returned and accepted the situation as if 
nothing remarkable had occurred. 

In her abnormal state Mrs. Mowatt would always refer to 
her waking self in the third person. She would be agitated 
by the touch of any one except her husband or her mesmer- 
izer, unless the person touching her was previously put en 
rapport with her, or "in communication," as she termed 
it, by the mesmerizer. Without this precaution a foreign 
touch would produce a painful shuddering. She would 
take no notice of persons in the room until they had been 
put en rapport with her. 

By making a few passes over the arm or hand I could 
paralyze the muscles of voluntary motion and render the 
limb cataleptic. In this state it was utterly insensible to 
perforation or incision. In complete catalepsj', as medical 
science tells us, there is an absolute suspension of the func- 
tions of the animal life, while the processes of the organic 
life go on with comparatively little change. On the return 
of consciousness no memory is retained of anything that 
may have passed during the parox3'sin, the very same train 
of ideas returning when consciousness is restored as was 
present at the instant it ceased. 

Quite analogous with this phenomenon was one I have ex- 
perienced hundreds of times in the case of Mrs. Mowatt. 
While she would be in animated conversation and in the 
midst of a sentence in her abnormal state, I would suddenly 
wake her. She would look around for a moment with a 
dazed expression, and then resume the ordinary tenor of 
her waking occupations. On again inducing the abnormal 
state — it might be hours or days afterwards — before 
quite regaining the clear state of complete somnambulic 
consciousness, she would go on and finish the sentence in 
the utterance of which she had been interrupted long before. 
I never knew this experiment to fail. There could be no 



INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 221 

better evidence than this of the separation between the 
two states of consciousness. The opinions she held in the 
two states were often widely different. Persons she liked 
and trusted when awake, she would shrink from when som- 
nambulic, and vice versa. Her religious notions were 
greatly modified by the somuambuhc impressions which she 
was allowed to carry into her waking state. 

In her highest state of consciousness — for there were 
different degrees — she w r ouid claim to see and talk with 
spirits ; but finding me incredulous on the subject, she did 
not urge it. She spoke always of that circle of the spirit- 
world proximate to this world as containing beings subject 
to the same laws of progress that we find here. 

Why should not this be true ? Consider the great discov- 
eries of the last few r centuries ; the advance in general cul- 
ture. Can we suppose that our spirit friends and predeces- 
sors have been idle all this time ; that they have lost that 
divine thirst for knowledge, those incentives to diligence 
and activity, which were necessary for their happiness wmile 
on earth ? Is it probable that they enter at once into the 
same state of enlightenment which may distinguish those 
who left this life thousands of years before them? It may 
be that advancement will depend more on our moral status 
than on our intellectual attainments ; but from all we can 
learn the correspondence with our present moral and mental 
activities will be much closer than we are apt to imagine. 
Life will still be progress, and progress through the volun- 
tary exercise of our own powers, our own earnestness in the 
pursuit of truth. 

That there will still be new changes and expansions of 
being to look forward to, as wonderful and inexplicable 
to us as the transition of death is to us while here, is ra- 
tionally to be expected. Man may develop a complex, tri- 
une nature in the next life as well as in this. There will 
always be a new goal for us to look forward to and strive 



222 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

for. There will still be an horizon for oar orderly limita- 
tion. Therefore the objection made by David A. Strauss 
that the prospect of an endless being strikes him with dis- 
may, springs from a wholly chimerical anticipation. "As 
our day our strength will be." This good mother nature 
will not desert us, even in the next stage of being. All 
will be adapted to the soul's inherent energies and needs. 

The developments now going on for facilitating the inter- 
course between the two spheres of being, are a proof that 
our spirit brethren are not inactive ; that among them are 
operative the same laws of progress that make the moral 
and mental life of mankind on this planet. 

Among the persons I remember to have introduced to 
Mrs. Mowatt while she was somnambulic, were N. P. Wil- 
lis, Dr. Mott, and Dr. William E. Channiug, the great 
Unitarian divine. Willis, whom Goethe would have classed 
among Ms "demoniac men," was deeply interested, and 
kept up an animated conversation for an hour or more with 
the somnambule. 

Dr. Valentine Mott, the eminent New York surgeon 
(1785-1865), had been a pupil of Sir Astley Cooper, who 
said of him, " He has performed more of the great opera- 
tions than an}' man living, or that ever did live." Mott 
told me that he was present, April 8, 1829, at the operation 
mentioned in the Report of the French Acadenry of Med- 
icine, 1831, in which Cloquet, the French surgeon in Paris, 
removed an ulcerated tumor from the breast of Madame 
Plantin while she was in a state of partial catalepsy induced 
by mesmerism. In her waking state she had manifested 
the greatest horror at having the operation performed. 
Somnambulic, she spoke of it with perfect calmness, and 
while the operation was going on, which consumed more 
than nine miuutes, conversed tranquilly with the operator, 
and did not exhibit the slightest sign of sensibility. No 
movement of the limbs or of the features, no change in 



INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 223 

the perspiration nor in the voice, no emotion, not even in 
the pulse, was manifested. 

Learning that I had induced somnambulism in Mrs. 
Mowatt, whom he had known well from a child, Mott 
sought an opportunity of testing the fact of physical insen- 
sibility in her case. This he did to his entire satisfaction. 
I made a few passes over her arm, causing rigidity. With 
his lancet he probed the flesh, and tested her in various 
ways. She talked and smiled, giving not the slightest in- 
dication of physical feeling. 

The wonderful fact of discrete degrees of consciousness 
is furly proved in somnambulism. This consciousness may 
be above that of the normal state or below it. The case is 
on record of a pious clergyman who, when somnambulic, 
would manifest kleptomania. He would steal and secrete 
articles without any rational purpose. The somnambulists 
who walk on the roofs of houses, or jump out of windows, 
have a certain consciousness, though it ma} r be disordered 
by delusion. Dr. Pritchard sa}~s, "A somnambulator is 
nothing but a dreamer who is able to act his dreams." 
Insensible to external phenomena, his functions are still 
obedient to an inward consciousness. But as there are 
many degrees of somnambulic consciousness, Pritchard's 
definition is a very limited and misleading one. 

In Mrs. Mowatt's case the state was in every respect a 
superior one, intellectual!}', morally, and, I may add, 
physically, for her powers of enduring fatigue were greatly 
increased. Frequently with her husband we would cross 
the river to Hoboken, and pass hours strolling through the 
beautiful grounds. She would be in the somnambulic state 
all the time, wearing a .veil to conceal the peculiar ex- 
pression of her eyes from passers-b}\ Her spirits were 
alwa}~s exalted in this state, and she was full of vivacity 
and glee. Awake she would scream if a caterpillar got on 
her dress. Somnambulic she would manifest the greatest 



224 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

tenderness for every living thing, taking up even a wounded 
snake from the road, and placing it where it would be safe 
from passing wheels. 

I have letters that were written b} r her in utter darkness, 
and the chirography is a great improvement on that of her 
waking state. She would embroider and do all sorts of 
fancy work in the dark. She would predict crises in her 
disease, and in one instance I knew her to predict a severe 
hemorrhage of the lungs six months before it occurred, 
naming the very day and hour. Those who discredit these 
phenomena will say there was deception. I cannot look 
back to the most trifling incident that would justify the 
suspicion ; and yet I was so unduly skeptical that I was 
always on the lookout for something that might raise a 
question of the reality of what I witnessed. 

I met her and her husband at Lenox, Mass., in the sum- 
mer of 1842. In the same house with us was the Rev. Dr. 
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), who took a deep 
interest in her case. Both in her normal and abnormal 
state she had several conversations with him. They dis- 
cussed Swedenborg and other topics, and while somnam- 
bulic she answered with rare acuteness some of his objec- 
tions to the great seer's " memorable relations." At 
Channing's request I mesmerized her for a dental opera- 
tion ; and I well remember his getting down on his knees 
to watch the expression of her face while she sat in the 
chair, and the dentist extracted with his instrument one of 
her firmly fixed molars. Channing was amply satisfied that 
there was insensibility to pain in her case.* 



* Mrs. Mo watt, though of a remarkably sensitive constitution, and not 
weighing a hundred pounds when I first know her, was much benefited by the 
treatment she prescribed for herself while somnambulic, and attained a weight of 
one hundred and fifty pounds. She died at Twickenham, on the Thames, iq 
1869. I saw her two days before her death, and never did I witness such per- 
fect, cheerful tranquillity as she manifested. In that supreme moment, when 
death seemed to have his hand on her, her thoughts and conversation were all 



INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 225 

The phenomena presented by Miss Fancher resemble 
many of those through Mrs. Mowatt ; but Miss Fancher is 
independent of any mesmeric aid, and her state of con- 
sciousness would seem to be uniform and normal, or else 
producible at will. Two well-known physicians of New 
York, — William A. Hammond and George M. Beard, 
" experts in nervous diseases," — have attempted to throw 
discredit upon the testimony in her case. Both are very 
absolute in their repudiation of the thoroughly well-estab- 
lished fact of clairvoyance. Dr. Hammond declares that 
" no one has ever read unknown writing through a closed 
envelope ; " and Dr. Beard says, in regard to the same sub- 
ject, "It is capable of absolute proof that no phenomena 
of this kind have ever appeared in the world in any human 
creature, in trance or out of trance." It is generally the 
fate of error to be betrayed by the very terms in which it 
expresses itself. What is this "absolute proof" offered 
us by Dr. Beard ? It is simply his own individual deduc- 
tion from certain facts as construed, or denied, b} T his own 
a priori intuitions. And we are seriously called upon to 
accept this as a scientific argument, while in extravagance 
it transcends all the claims of all the trance-mediums 
themselves. 

So far is it from being true that experts are the persons 
best qualified to pronounce upon phenomena contradicting 
their own confirmed theories, experience shows that the pre- 
conceptions of the expert are often a decided hindrance to 
the proper appreciation of the truth. Physicians of the 
highest standing were those who most opposed Harvey, 
the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. Experi- 
enced navigators and geographers were those who opposed 



of others, not once of herself. It was not faith or hope, but actual certainty 
which she felt in regard to the future. " The invisible world with her had 
syrap:itluzed." Mary Howitt wrote of her, " How excellent in character, how 
energetic, unselfish, devoted, is this interesting woman ! " 

15 



226 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

Columbus. It was Bacon who repudiated the Copernican 
system. Those persons most conversant with the post-office 
were the last to approve of the plan of uniform penny post- 
age. Chemists and plrysicists were the experts who said it 
was impossible to light cities with gas. Eminent men of 
science were those who disbelieved in the practicability of 
ocean steam-navigation. 

The greater any one's skill and experience in his own 
special department, the more competent he may be to 
judge of admitted facts, and of details not foreign to his 
professional routine ; but the more unlikely will he be to 
give a fair hearing to any fact or phenomenon introducing a 
radical change in his notions upon a subject of which he 
imagines he has a full mastery. 

Dr. Hammond declares that "no one has ever read un- 
known writing through a closed envelope." But here comes 
a whole avalanche of testimony — not from Spiritualists, 
oh, no ! — but from some of the. most eminent physicians, 
clerg} T men, and men of culture in Brooklyn and New York, 
testifying that Miss Mary J. Fancher, the phenomena in 
whose case have been going on now for some fifteen years, 
has repeatedly read ' ' unknown writing through a closed 
envelope." 

Miss Fancher was born in Attleborough, Mass., August 
16, 1848, and was educated at the Brooklyn Heights Sem- 
inaiy, under the care of Mr. Charles E. West. In her 
eighteenth year she fell from a horse, and had several ribs 
broken. Soon afterwards, as she was alighting from a 
horse-car, the conductor rang the bell too hastily, her dress 
caught on the step, and she was dragged for a block over 
the pavement. Her spine was badly injured, and her body 
and head were so frightfully bruised, that she went into 
convulsions. This was in 1865. 

She soon underwent astonishing physical changes, and 
has been bed- ridden ever since. In succession she was 



INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 227 

bereft of vision, speech, and hearing. For thirteen years 
the amount of food she took was hardly so much as a 
heaily man could eat in forty-eight hours. Eventually all 
efforts to make her take nourishment were abandoned by 
Drs. Speir and Ormiston. Her physical condition changed. 
One day all her senses, except that of touch, seemed to be 
paralyzed ; the next, she could hear, and taste, and talk. 
But her eyes did not open for nine years. She was very 
sensitive to heat. In midwinter her only covering would 
be a single sheet, while the window would be kept partly 
open. She has successively lost and regained several of 
the senses. Mr. West writes : 

"For many daj's together she has been to all appear- 
ances dead. The slightest pulse could not be detected : 
there was no evidence of respiration. Her limbs were as 
cold as ice, and had there not been some warmth about her 
heart, she would have been buried. When I first saw her 
she had but one sense — that of touch. By running her 
fingers over the printed page, she could read with equal 
facility in light or darkness. The most delicate work is 
done 03* her in the night. . . . Her power of clairv^ance, 
or second sight, is marvellously developed. Distance im- 
poses no barriers. Without the slightest error she dictates 
the contents of sealed letters which have never been in her 
hands. She discriminates in darkness the most delicate 
shades of color. She writes with extraordinary rapidity." 

Mr. Henry M. Parkhurst, the astronomer, of 173 Gates 
Avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y., testifies as follows: 

' ' From the waste-basket of a New York gentleman 
acquaintance he fished an unimportant business letter, 
without reading it, tore it into ribbons, and tore the ribbons 
into squares. He shook the pieces well together, put them 
into an envelope, and sealed it. This he subsequently 
handed to Miss Fancher. The blind girl took the envelope 
in her hand, passed her hand over it several times, called 
for paper and pencil, and wrote the letter verbatim. The 
seal of the envelope had not been broken. Mr. Parkhurst 
himself opened it, pasted the contents together, and com- 



228 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

pared the two. Miss Fancher's was a literal copy of the 
original." 

Dr. C. L. Mitchell, of 129, and Dr. R. F. Speir, of 162, 
Montague Street, Brooklyn, both testify to Miss Fancher's 
clairvoyance. Dr. R. Ormiston is convinced there is no 
deception in her case. The Rev. J. T. Duryea says : 
"The child cannot deceive. How does she arrange and 
decipher the contents of a letter that has been cut into 
pieces and sealed within an envelope — a letter of the con- 
tents of which those who gave it to her had not the slightest 
notion ? " 

I present not a tithe of the testimony in this remarkable 
case. Though blind and in darkness, Miss Fancher has 
been known to distinguish the nicest shades of color in 
worsted before they were taken out of the packets in which 
they were enclosed. There is nothing in the facts foreign 
to those of Spiritualism ; but as having occurred in the 
presence of non-Spiritualists they have a high confirmatory 
value. 

In his book Dr. Hammond says : " In the fact that the 
spinal cord and sympathetic ganglia are not devoid of men- 
tal power, we find an explanation of some of the most 
striking phenomena of what is called Spiritualism." As 
well might he say, that in the fact that the violin is not 
devoid of musical power, we have an explanation of the 
musical genius manifested by a Paganini or a Vieuxtemps. 
Not only the spinal cord and the ganglia, but other parts 
of the body besides the brain, have been made apparently 
instrumental as conductors of mental force ; but what does 
this prove if not that the mind, in abnormal states of the 
system, may act independently of the brain, thus showing 
that the materialist's theory, which regards the brain as 
" the organ that secretes thought," and the only one, does 
not cover the phenomena ? Does not sight without phys- 
ical eyes imply thought without a physical brain ? 



INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 229 

In a tract entitled, " The Scientific Lesson of the Mollie 
Fancher Case," Dr. George M. Beard remarks : 

" Unsonght-for evidence has been brought to me from 
various quarters — from physicians and from clergymen as 
honorable and able as airy whose names have appeared in 
connection with this case — that Mollie Fancher intention- 
ally deceives ; that she lives on the fat of the land ; that 
the fancy articles she professes to make are made for her ; 
that her reading without ey^es is done by trickery ; but all 
this, like the evidence on the opposite side, is of a non- 
expert character, and can, in science, receive no consid- 
eration." 

Could Mrs. Candor herself have done it better in this 
attempt to sla} T a reputation? Sheridan's lady limited her 
scandalous remarks to the drawing-room ; the doctor sends 
his broadcast over the land in a published tract. 

It is not surprising that he should be disturbed by the 
strong and respectable testimony- in regard to phenomena 
similar to those which he has been denouncing lustily" for 
years as impostures or delusions. He is committed to a 
theory which would dismiss all supersensual facts as impos- 
sibilities. He claims to be qualified as an expert to decide 
this question of clairvoyance, but, when we come to inquire 
into his qualifications, we find that the}" are mostly of the 
negative order, and based, not on his acquaintance with 
inductive facts, but on his estimate of his own remarkable 
cleverness at "deductive reasoning." So that when he 
wishes to prove Miss Fancher an impostor, he drops from 
physics into metaphysics. 

Why is clairvoyance untrue ? And he gives us to under- 
stand that it is untrue, because "absolutely disproved by 
deductive reasoning," (that is, by reasoning from d ijrioi*i, 
intuitive assumptions,) — and because the "special sci- 
ences" to which its claims must be referred know them 
"to be false without any examination" ! 

"Studying the subject through the reason," he says, 






230 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

' ' we know deductively by the law of biolog} T that no mem- 
ber of the human species can have any qualhy different in 
kind from those that belong to the race." 

"A qualhy different in kind!" No such chimerical 
claim as that which Dr. Beard imagines, is set up for any 
clairvoyant. There are some persons born with no ear for 
music ; but here is Mozart, who at five years of age shows 
wonderful genius both as a composer and performer. 

Some persons are very dull at figures ; but here are the 
boys, Colburn, Bidder, and others, who perform in a few 
seconds what even an accomplished accountant would find 
it hard to do in a day. When asked how he did it, Bidder 
replied, w ' I do not do it, I see it." 

It is estimated that ten per cent, of the children born 
into the world are color-blind. Do we therefore argue that 
they are destitute of a faculty which the rest of the human 
race possess ? Far from it. We conclude that the faculty 
in them is undeveloped or perverted, either through lack 
of attention, or because of some derangement of the visual 
organs. 

So it is in respect to clairvo3 T ance. The theory is not, 
as Dr. Beard blindly supposes, that one person has what 
the rest of the race are deprived of. The real expert in 
psychology learns by his inductive facts, as well as by his 
deductive reasoning, that clairvoyance is a facultj^ common 
to every human being, though developed only under pe- 
culiar conditions. This is proved in dreaming and other 
phenomena. It is a spiritual endowment which, though 
latent, undeveloped, or working in secret, in this life, is yet 
the foregleam of an extra sense, which we ma}' have in the 
next ; for, as Professor Pierce, of Cambridge, remarks, 
" There is no reason why our senses should not be multi- 
plied through the possibilities of the electro-luminous body 
which will be disengaged from the physical at death." 

So much for Dr. Beard's wild assertion that he can abso- 



INDUCED SOMNAMBULISM. 231 

lutelj prove that there never was a case of clairvoyance, 
in trance or out of trance, in the history of the world ! 
His deductive reasoning in the case is founded in a gross 
misconception, not on an axiomatic truth, and has no sci- 
entific force. Clairvoyance is a proof that our spiritual or 
transcendent faculties co-exist with the normal, even in the 
earth-life. 

Induction, according to Watts, is reasoning from partic- 
ulars to generals, and deduction is reasoning from generals 
to particulars. But in the process of induction there may 
be a deductive or intuitional element, as when we devise an 
hypothesis, and bring facts to justify the inference of an 
alleged law. To assume that deductive reasoning is infal- 
lible is absurd. History is full of the blunders of eminent 
men, who allowed their deductive reason to discredit real 
facts. 

Dr. Beard divides the universe into the known, the un- 
known, and the supernatural ; and he tells us that " in the 
realm of the supernatural all things are possible, and all 
things are undemonstrable." TTould it not be a little less 
unscientific to say that no objective phenomena can be 
supernatural ; that what seems to us such may be merely 
the natural, unrecognized or misunderstood? What pos- 
sible reason has a man, claiming to be a man of science, 
for saying that ' ' in the realm of the supernatural all things 
are possible," when he does not even know of the existence 
of the supernatural? 

The rotundity of the earth would not have been proved 
to this da}', if men of science had been "experts" of the 
type of Dr. Beard, and maintained that facts cannot be 
demonstrated as well as propositions, or that the}' can be 
annihilated by " deductive reasoning." It is demonstrative 
evidence only that is in the true sense scientific ; and how, 
out of his purely negative notions, is he going to give us 
any demonstrable proof of his negations ? In his claim to 



232 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 






judge of scientific possibilities by his " deductive reason- 
ing," he is simply an idealist or an intuitionalist. 

The late E..W. Cox, serjeant-at-law and President of 
the Ps}' etiological Society of Great Britain, but not at the 
time a Spiritualist, sa} T s : " I do not shrink from the avowal 
of more than of mere faith — of a firm conviction, induced 
by positive evidence derived from this examination of the 
mechanism of man at rest and in action — that soul is a 
part of this mechanism ; that man is in fact a soul clothed 
with a body ; that for this soul there is a future, and, in 
this future, God." 

A party of experts, of whom Serjeant Cox was one, was 
planned to test Alexis Didier, of whom I have already 
given some account. A word was written by a friend in a 
distant town and enclosed in an envelope, without any of 
the party knowing what the word was. This envelope was 
enclosed in six others of thick brown paper, each sealed. 
The packet was handed to Alexis, who placed it on his 
forehead, and in three minutes and a. half wrote the con- 
tents correctly, imitating the very handwriting. See "What 
am I?" by Serjeant Cox ; vol. ii. p. 167. 

"Fear of experts," says Dr. Beard, referring to Miss 
Fancher's case, " is one of the symptoms almost pathogno- 
monic." But the real motive that makes the sensitive sub- 
ject slry of experimenters who, with their incredulity, 
bring the predetermination not to be convinced, is not a 
fear of genuine experts, but a sense of the folly of at- 
tempting to convince those who are wilfully committed 
against the fact, and who, unconsciously perhaps, try to 
prevent what they might not wish to find true. 

Dr. Hammond proposed to test Miss Fancher 03^ placing 
in an envelope a check for over one thousand dollars, and 
having her tell, under prescribed conditions, the number, 
amount, &c. Such offers have been repeatedly made, and 
declined for a reason, which is this : You might as well 



CLAIRVOYANCE. 233 

expect the needle to point true while 3-011 are agitating the 
compass, as expect to elicit clairvoyance under the stress 
and excitement of an anxious motive, or under the dis- 
turbance produced by the simple presence of an uncon- 
genial person, aggressively disposed. 

Clairvoyance is a phenomenon as delicate and uncertain 
as that manifested in the caprices — the sudden flashes and 
sudden eclipses — of memory. A subject's lucidity is al- 
waj's impaired or spoiled by anything that excites anxi- 
ety or irritation, or appeals to cupidity. Na} T , the very 
presence of a person convinced that there is imposture, and 
eagerly bent on detecting it, would, without any external 
manifestation, be felt by a sensitive as readily as she might 
feel, in her normal state, a freezing current of air. 

Every patient investigator knows all this ; and it was the 
reason why such physicians as Dr. Gregor} T and Dr. Had- 
dock, having the command of clairvoyants, alwa} T s refused 
to subject them to the money test. Such negative proofs 
of indisposition to act under conditions that would intro- 
duce all these adverse influences, do not reach the real 
truth, for, as Mr. Wallace remarks, " How can any number 
of individual failures affect the question of the compara- 
tively rare successes ? As well deny that any rifleman can 
hit the bull's-eye at one thousand } T ards because none can 
be sure of hitting it always and at a moment's notice." 

There is no great subject in regard to which investiga- 
tion has been so barren of results, as in that of discrete 
states of consciousness. With the exception of a few stu- 
dents of mesmerism, who among the philosophers has 
treated it intelligently ? who has penetrated to the actual 
significance of the phenomenon ? 

In certain abnormal states, in trance and somnambulism, 
a consciousness is revealed which is not that of the indi- 
vidual when he is awake or not "under influence." The 
somnambulic consciousness may comprehend the normal, 



234 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

but the normal may know nothing of what is peculiar to 
the somnambulic ; of facts and persons familiar to the 
somnambulist, the same subject rnay be wholly ignorant in 
his normal state, and in that state he may entertain opin- 
ions diametrically opposed to those he holds in his higher 
and more lucid state. 

Townshend, in his "Facts in Mesmerism," relates the 
case of his subject, E. A., in whom good talents and a 
good disposition had been warped by an unfortunate edu- 
cation. Young as he was, he had imbibed infidel opinions 
at Paris, and had no belief either in God or a future state. 
In somnambulism, all this was changed. His ideas of the 
mind were correct, and singularly opposed to the material- 
istic views he took of all questions w T hen in the waking 
state. "Is there a future punishment for evil-doers?" 
Townshend once asked of him when somnambulic. " Un- 
doubtedry, a great one." " In what will it consist? " "In 
seeing themselves as they are, and God as he is." The 
theory that E. A., while somnambulic, merely reflected the 
opinions of his mesmerizer, will not serve ; for on man}* 
subjects he would maintain independent opinions, and 
argue with great acuteness. 

Instances in which a great change of character has been 
manifested in somnambulism could be quoted without 
number. Such changes are often produced by disease. 
"Sometimes," says Hahnemann, "a man who is patient 
while in the enio}*ment of health becomes passionate, vio- 
lent, capricious, and unbearable, or impatient and despair- 
ing while he is ill ; or those formerly chaste and modest 
often become lascivious and shameless. It is frequently 
the case that a sensible man becomes stupid in sickness, 
whereas a weak mind is rendered stronger, and a man of 
slow temperament acquires great presence of mind and 
resolution." 

"These physical defects," says Dr. Gorton, "are fre- 



A DUPLEX CONSCIOUSNESS. 235 

quently observed in adult life, in the progress of chronic 
maladies. The vicious become amiable, and the amiable 
vicious ; the irritable and combative become kind and 
obliging ; the weak-minded become strong-minded, and the 
strong-minded weak-minded. . . . Sometimes the psychi- 
cal symptoms are more clearly characteristic of the malady 
than are the so-called physical symptoms." 

One of the most remarkable instances of a change of 
consciousness is that of Mary Reynolds, one of an English 
family that settled near Meadville, Pa., early in this cen- 
tury. A full and remarkably well-authenticated history of 
her case was published in Harper's Magazine for May, 
•18G0, from the pen of the Rev. William S. Plummer. In 
1811, when nineteen } T ears of age, Mary fell into a state 
of insensibility. From this she recovered, but subse- 
quently, for fifteen years, presented the phenomenon of a 
duplex consciousness. In her abnormal second state, how- 
ever, there was a peculiarity distinguishing it from all other 
cases (with one exception) that I have known of; for, 
instead of having in her second state the memories of her 
first, all the knowledge she had ever acquired seemed to 
have passed away from her. She knew neither father nor 
mother, brother nor sisters ; she had not the slightest 
consciousness that she had ever existed before. She would 
play with a rattlesnake she met in her path, wholly igno- 
rant of the danger. She was quick to learn, however, and 
made rapid acquisitions. In her thirty -fifth year, the alter- 
nations from one state to the other ceased, leaving her per- 
manently in her seco?id state. In this state she was a very 
different person in character from what she was in her first 
state. Sedate, melancholy, slow of thought, and unimagi- 
native in her first state, she was gaj 7 , social, jocular, and 
fond of poetry in her second state. Her handwriting, too, 
was very different from that of number One. 

" The phenomena," says Dr. Plummer, " were as if her 



236 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

body was the house of two souls, not occupied by both at 
the same time, but alternately, first by one, and then by 
the other. That the case was a genuine one admits not 
of a doubt. The two lives were entirely separate. The 
thoughts and feelings, the knowledge and experience, the 
joys and sorrows, the likes and dislikes of the one state did 
not in any way influence or modify those of the other. 

' ' The leading facts are authenticated by a chain of tes- 
timon} T of unimpeachable character, covering the whole 
period. Mary Reynolds had no motive for practising im- 
posture ; and her mental and moral character forbids the 
supposition that she had either the disposition or ability to 
plan and carry out such a fraud ; and had she done so, she 
could not have avoided detection in the course of the 
fifteen years during which the pretended changes alternated, 
and the subsequent quarter of a century, which she \)ro- 
fessed to pass wholly in her second state." The Rev. Dr. 
Wayland, in the last edition of his "Intellectual Philos- 
oplry," refers to this case as "more remarkable than any 
that he had met with elsewhere." 

It is indeed a curious case. Which was the accountable 
being, number One or number Two? If, as Locke tells us, 
personality consists in identity of consciousness, was Mary 
Reynolds a person ? In physical form she was the same in 
the two states, but in mind, disposition, and memory, she 
was wholly different. What became finally of number 
One? Was she rubbed out, as one rubs out an unsatis- 
factory drawing? Was number Two a distinct spiritual 
entity ? If the two were one in essence, but manifesting 
two distinct consciousnesses, then why should there not be 
for all of us a distinct consciousness, stowed away some- 
where in our complex organism, into which we may emerge 
at death? But if we lose our familiar consciousness, and 
become radically changed in character and memory, do we 
not lose our identity? Can we be said to be the same 



A DUPLEX CONSCIOUSNESS. 237 

being we were in this life ? Are we not in a sense anni- 
hilated ? 

Our solution of the puzzle is this : There was only one 
Mary Reynolds, and only one consciousness ; but of that 
consciousness there were what Swedenborg calls discrete 
degrees. If in one state she did not have the memories of 
the other, it was not because aixy mental possession was 
obliterated, but because in the revolution a new phase, a 
distinct degree, was arrived at. The memories and the 
suspended consciousness were all in the soul, like a faculty 
unexercised or superseded. The soul, rising in this life or 
the next, to a consciousness as high above the second as 
the second was above the first, would comprehend all that 
was in. both degrees ; appropriating to itself what was best 
in each — the memories remaining unimpaired forever. 

A case somewhat analogous to that which I have de- 
scribed in my own experience, as illustrating the fact of a 
distinct somnambulic consciousness, may be found related 
in La Revue Scientifique of May 20, 1876, edited by Ger- 
mer Bailliere, Paris. It is that of Felida X., born at Bor- 
deaux, in 1843, of healthy parents. At fourteen and a 
half years old, she presented the curious phenomenon of 
"a double personal^." Dr. Azam, of the Public Insane 
Asylum, investigated and described the case. Passing 
through a state of cataleptic prostration, Felida would 
emerge into a state where she was no longer the same per- 
son. Sullen and sad in her normal state, the Ego Number 
Two would be gay, vivacious, and active. She would now 
remember all that took place during previous similar states, 
as well as during her normal life ; but when she relapsed 
into her normal state she would have no remembrance of 
what had happened during these attacks. In this second 
life there were no hallucinations ; she seemed in the full 
possession of all her faculties ; there was no physical pain ; 
it was a superior life in every way. The phenomena seem 



238 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

to have been similar to those in the case of Mrs. Mowatt ; 
only Felida was independent of mesmeric influence. 

An illustration of that interior or psychical conscious- 
ness, the realit}^ of which is verified by our phenomena, is 
contained in an incident originally communicated to me b}- 
my sister, Mrs. Henry B. Hoffman, of Davenport, Iowa, 
in a private letter, which was published by me in the Bos- 
ton Evening Transcript of October 2, 1874. Bishop Lee, 
of the American Episcopal Church, died September 26, 
1874. M} T sisters letter, dated Davenport, September 28, 
1874, is as follows : 

"We have been very anxious the last two weeks over 
the illness of Bishop Lee, which terminated in his death on 
Saturday morning. Some two months ago he got up in 
the night and took a bath, and on returning to his room he 
made a mis-step, slipped down a long flight of stairs, and 
landed at the foot with a tremendous crash, as he was very 
heavy, weighing over two hundred pounds. It aroused the 
whole family ; Mrs. Lee and Carrie sprang from their beds, 
and lighting each a candle, went to see what had happened, 
and found the bishop lying on the floor of the entry. He 
got up, however, without aid, and seemed to have received 
no injury except a few slight bruises, though his right hand 
was a little lamed. 

" Mr. Hoffman and m} T self called on him two clays after, 
and while telling us the circumstance of the fall, he mentioned 
this coincidence : He had a letter in his hand, which he had 
just received from his son Henry, living at Kansas City. 
His son wrote : ' Are you well ? For last night I had a 
dream that troubles me. I heard a crash, and standing up, 
said to my wife, Did you hear that crash? I dreamed that 
father had a fall, and was dead. I got up and looked at 
my watch, and it was two o'clock. I could not sleep again, 
so vivid was the dream.' And it made him anxious to hear 
from home. 

"The bishop said he was not superstitious, but he 
thought it remarkable that Henry should have had the 
dream at the very hoar of the same night that the accident 
occurred. The difference in the time there and here (Kan- 
sas City and Davenport) is just fifteen minutes, and it was 



LUCID SOMNAMBULISM. 239 

a "quarter past two by his watch, making it at the same mo- 
ment. It was as if Henry had actually heard the fall. 
And the fall finally caused the bishop's death. His hand 
became intensely painful, and gangrene set in, which, after 
two weeks of suffering, terminated his life. We are none 
of us Spiritualists, as 3*ou know, but surely facts like this 
must go far to make us realize that there is a basis of truth 
for the hypothesis of spiritual faculties resident in man. 
How did Henry Lee become cognizant of the accident to 
his father?" 

How, indeed? Was his whole mental and ps3 T chical 
region in a state of insensibility and unconsciousness? 
Surely not ; for in that case there would have been no fac- 
ulty in a state to receive a supersensual impression. Was 
there a spiritual facuhy, sufficiently awake to be in a state 
of receptivit} T , while the plrysical senses were locked in 
slumber, and the phase of cerebral consciousness was 
eclipsed? Yes; it was through his spiritual consciousness 
that he, while his physical body was hundreds of miles 
away, heard the fall, and received the impression that his 
father had been mortally hurt. And such was the shock 
that it was communicated to his normal (cerebral) con- 
sciousness, and sleep was dispelled. 

A merchant of New Orleans, while in Paris, was awak- 
ened from sleep by hearing in a vivid dream, as it seemed, 
his son, who was in America, utter the words, "■ Father, 
I'm clying." So impressed by it was the merchant, that he 
rose from bed, struck a light, and recorded the dream and 
its date in his memorandum-book. On arriving in New 
Orleans, a month afterwards, the first acquaintance he met 
told him that his son was dead, and that his last words had 
been, "Father, I'm dying," — the date of the death cor- 
responding perfectly with that of the dream. This inci- 
dent I published at the time in a Boston newspaper, as I 
found it related, with names, in a New Orleans journal. It 



240 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

is adopted by Justinus Kerner, in his published Memo- 
rabilia. 

The Pacific Hotel, in St. Louis, was destroj*ed by fire, 
Februar} r , 1858. A little brother of Mr. Henry Rochester, 
living at home with his parents near Avon, N. Y., woke 
screaming from sleep the night of the fire, and declared 
that his brother Henry was burning to death in an hotel. 
Such was the boy's horror and alarm that it was with difficulty 
he could be pacified. This was about midnight. Twelve 
hours afterwards the parents received a telegram from St. 
Louis, confirming the boy's vision in every particular. 

In almost every family, whose traditions have been 
carefully kept, there is some incident to parallel these. 
They point to the great and significant fact of a spiritual 
consciousness, independent of the cerebral. Some finer or- 
ganism than the physical and external is needed to receive 
subtile impressions remitted on the instant from Kansas 
City to Davenport, from Ems to Boston, from Paris to 
New Orleans, and from Avon to St. Louis. The external 
senses are not used in these communications. Only the 
theoiy of spiritual senses, transcendent in their nature, 
will account for them. Multiplied as these phenomena 
have been within the last thirty years, they cannot be rea- 
sonably explained away as coincidences. They are made 
credible by the now familiar facts of Spiritualism. 

In the harbor of Norwalk, Conn., June 7, 1873, a little 
row-boat, containing nine bo} T s, members of Mr. Selleck's 
school, under the charge of Mr. Farnham, their teacher, 
was struck and overturned by the rudder of a steamer, 
which had suddenly backed in consequence of an accident 
onboard. Three young and noble boj^s — Eddie Morris, 
Willie Crane, and Charley Bostwick — were drowned by 
the collision. From the Nomvallc Gazette of June 10, 1873, 
I quote the following particulars of a dream which preceded 
the accident : 



SOMNAMBULIC PREVISION. 241 

" A curious circumstance of a dream has gained some 
notoriety, and though all parties disclaim all inclination to 
be superstitious, yet it is so singular that we have been at 
the pains of getting the facts. Last Friday (the day before 
the accident), Dr. Ha} r s, an assistant teacher, and a man 
of medical attainments, remarked to a fellow-teacher, ' I 
have dreamed, two nights in succession, that three of our 
bo} T s were drowned. It is very foolish to speak of it, but 
somehow it haunts me, and please have a care to the boys 
when on the water.' Saturday morning, he remarked to 
Mr. Farnham, who was to head the party to Peach Island, 
'Farnham, look out for the boj^s, for somehow I can't rid 
myself of that presentiment.' When Charley White — the 
first boy who reached the house Saturday night — came in, 
drenched with water, the doctor exclaimed, ' How bad is 
it ? Who is drowned ? ' and fainted, and fell into White's 
arms." 

Wishing to authenticate this remarkable statement, I 
wrote to the Norwalk Gazette, and in a few days received 
this reply : 

"Noewalk, June 5, \%1&. 

" Dear Sir : Yours of May 27th was duly received. We 
have delaj- ed answering for several days in hopes of finding 
a copy of the Gazette containing the dream alluded to. 
We have finally found one copj^, which we forward to your 
address by this mail. You will find a full report of the 
accident, &c. The dream was personally related to us at 
the, time, as much pains was taken to obtain all facts and 
incidents of interest. Yours truly, 

"A. H. Byington & Co." 

Here is not only clairvoyance, but prevision through a 
dream. It is in perfect accord with the testimony of Aris- 
totle, Hippocrates, G-alen, Cicero, Plutarch, and thousands 
of other eminent men of ancient times to similar occur- 
rences. Indeed, the number of well-attested cases in our 
own day is overwhelming. 

Does divination require the aid of independent spirits ? 
The question, as I have already shown, is discussed by 
16 



242 SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 

Plutarch, and he concludes, with Cicero, that there may be 
two kinds of divination, one from the gods (spirits), and 
one from the godlike powers of the human soul. This 
fully accords with the theory, that a class of spiritual phe- 
nomena may, under conditions, be produced by spirits in 
the flesh, as well as by those out of the flesh. 

On the subject of human testimony, La Place, the great 
mathematician, remarks (in his Essai sur les Probabilites) , 
that " any case, however apparently incredible, if it is a 
recurrent case, is as much entitled to a fair valuation, 
under the laws of induction, as if it had been more prob- 
able beforehand." How opposed to this rule is the de- 
meanor of phy sicists generally towards spiritual phenomena ! 

" Orthodox science," says Edward Maitland, " has three 
defects : First, it assumes that it knows, in advance of ex- 
perience, both what are the limits of natural fact, and what 
are the limits of the natural faculties by which the fact is 
to be judged. Secondly, it assumes that there are no facts 
which are not expressible in terms belonging to a single plane 
of consciousness ; that is, it assumes the reality of all that is 
perceived by the senses on one plane, namely, the physical, 
and it attempts to explain, in terms derived from that plane, 
phenomena which pertain to other planes ; and failing to 
find such explanation, it rejects all insoluble phenomena as 
fraud." .... 

Thus any super-physical fact is, in the estimation of the 
pseudo-science that would identify mind and matter, non- 
existent. And yet, in many waj^s, it asserts, or hypoth- 
ecates, doctrines for which experience cannot vouch. 






CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 243 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ADVENT OF MODERN . SPIRITUALISM. SPIRIT-COMMUNICA- 
TIONS. TRY THE SPIRITS. INCONSISTENCIES OF TRANCE- 

I MEDIUMSHIP. — MORE OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. MORE 

PHENOMENA. 

Coleridge once said of mesmerism, that "it might be 
the refraction of a great truth, still below the horizon." 
This seems much like a premonition of the advent of mod- 
ern Spiritualism- 
Andrew Jackson Davis, in " Nature's Divine Revelations," 
written as far back as the year 1845, remarked in regard to 
the intercommunication of the spirit- world and ours : "This 
truth will ere long present itself in the form of a living 
demonstration." The words were uttered two years before 
the manifestations at Hydesville. Parts of the book were 
read in manuscript to the Rev. George Bush, the eminent 
Hebrew scholar, and myself, as far back as the } 7 ear 1845. 
The following passage from a communication got medially 
through the little gyrating tripod called a planchette, is a 
fair specimen of the better sort of writings purporting to 
come from spirits : 

" Hitherto science has been almost wholly materialistic in 
its tendencies, having nothing to do with spiritual things, 
but ignoring or casting doubt upon them ; while spiritual 
matters, on the other hand, have been regarded by the 
Church wholly as matters of faith with which science has 
nothing to do. But through these modern manifestations 
God is providentially furnishing to the world all the ele- 
ments of a spiritual science which, when established and 
recognized? will be the standpoint from which all physical 



!44 



SPIRIT-COMMUNIC A.TIONS. 



science will be viewed. It will then be more distinctly known 
that all external and visible forms and motions originate 
from invisible, spiritual, and ultimately divine causes ; that 
between cause and effect there is always a necessity and 
intimate correspondence ; and hence that the whole outer 
universe is but the symbol and sure index of an invisible 
and vastly more real universe within. " 



All this is directly at variance with the declaration of 
Mrs. Kichmond's " controls," that there can be no scientific 
basis for Spiritualism. 

Phenomena outside of all scientific verification offer a 
field for abject superstition and for medial or spiritual des- 
potism ; for credulous submission on the one side and arro- 
gant assumption on the other. Every sincere truth-seeker 
will desire to have a purely rational and scientific co-ordina- 
tion of our facts. He will submit to no imperious ' ' Thus 
saith the Lord," as to their interpretation, whether it come 
from a spirit or from a medial seer claiming inspiration. 

The editor of a leading scientific journal tells us that the 
man of science may logically reply to the Spiritualist as 
follows : 

" I cannot waste time in listening to you. I am limited 
to nature ; j t ou take your stand outside of it, and there is 
no common ground between us. You come to me denying 
that which I find demonstrated everywhere. Between your 
Spiritualism and my materialism there is a fundamental 
antagonism ; your position is radically anti-scientific, and 
so let us keep clear of each other." 

Science takes cognizance of phenomena, objective and 
subjective. I have shown by overwhelming testimony 
that Spiritualism has its objective, though conditional, phe- 
nomena, which are just as much addressed to the senses as 
the phenomenon of opening flowers in spring. The physi- 
cist ma} T affect to rule out Spiritualism from the domain 
of science ; but this he cannot do without a violation of his 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 245 

own principle of loyalty to the experimental method. So 
far as it deals in such demonstrable phenomena as pneuma- 
tography, so far is Spiritualism scientific, and if our mate- 
rialistic opponents do not realize this, it is because they 
persist in ignoring facts now experimentally known to in- 
telligent millions. The pretence that these facts are con- 
trary to nature has been amply answered in preceding pages. 
No reasonable man will deny that the testimony of a hun- 
dred competent observers to a constantly recurring fact is 
sufficient to neutralize the speculations of all the philoso- 
phers and all the physicists. The assumption that there 
cannot be such an occurrence as a manifestation by spirit- 
power is as grossly unscientific as was the assumption of 
those who rejected the theory of the rotundity of the earth. 
And yet it is upon this mere assumption that our editor 
would justify his refusal to listen to our facts and our rea- 
sons. 

Science is not a mere knowledge of facts ; it is also a fit 
method of construing them. It has been said that " the 
common knowledge of people is imperfect because they find 
it easier to invent fanciful explanations of things than to 
discover the real ones ; that for thousands of years the 
knowledge of nature was rude and stationary because the 
habits of thought were so defective." All this is true ; but 
the following is also true : 

" The first step to a scientific view of things was one of 
self-assertion, implying that degree of mental independence 
which led men to think for themselves. They learned to make 
their own observations and to trust them against authority. 
It was found, as a first and indispensable condition of gain- 
ing clear ideas, that the mind must be occupied directly with 
the subject to be investigated. In this way scientific inquiry 
at length grew into a method of forming judgments which 
were characterized by the most vigilant and disciplined pre- 
cautions against error. The scientific method is applicable 
to all subjects whatever that involve constancy of relations, 



246 SPIRIT-COMMUNICATIONS. 

causes and effects, and conform to the operation of law. 
It is applicable wherever evidence is to be weighed, error 
got rid of, facts determined, and principles established." 

Do our specialists in science, who pretend to decide upon 
our facts, observe this first great requisite, name!}', to 
" occupy the mind directly with the subject to be investi- 
gated"? On the contrary, they dispose of it by the a 
priori method : it is all wrong because it conflicts with 
their preconceptions as to the order of nature. Well and 
wisely is it remarked by C. C. Masse} T : "To the present 
writer, at least, so-called Spiritualism represents no reli- 
gious craze or sectarian belief, but an aggregation (not yet 
to be called a system) of proven facts of incalculable im- 
portance to science and speculation. Those who so regard 
the subject would be unmoved in their convictions of its 
truth and importance, though it were proved that every 
medium was a rogue, and that many Spiritualists were 
their willing dupes. Much of the evidence on which we 
rely has proceeded on that very assumption, and on the 
precautions which were accordingly taken." 

Huxley objects to the low character of the communica- 
tions ; and so do we all object, when these can be fairly 
characterized as low. The claim of a class of mediums 
that the}^ are writing or speaking under the control of some 
spirit, once eminent in the earth-life as poet, philosopher, 
or seer, has been too freely admitted by uncritical Spirit- 
ualists. It cannot be too emphatically enjoined upon the 
inexperienced that one of the most difficult things to be 
satisfied of is the identity of a spirit. That cases of iden- 
tification do occur, I am well aware. From my own expe- 
rience I can believe that identifications by the materializa- 
tion process are not unfrequent. My friend, the Rev. 
Samuel Watson, of Memphis, tells me he has repeatedly had 
such experiences in his own librae , where the conditions 
were perfect. The following relation, which I find in a dis- 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 247 

course delivered in Brooklyn, N. Y., by Mrs. F. O. Hyzer, 
June 12, 1880, is similar to man}'' that I have heard from 
credible witnesses. In this case Mrs. Hyzer and her sister 
were wholly unknown to the medium : 

" At length a female form presented itself, and in answer 
to our inquiries claimed to be my mother, who passed from 
earth fifteen j T ears ago. Although her height, and size, and 
general appearance corresponded perfectly with the form 
of my mother, — having something resembling a pointed 
paper cap covering the head and upper portion of the face, 
(as they informed us, to shield their faces from the de- 
materializing effects of the light,) — I could not assure 
myself of her identitj T , and so my sister and m} T self ad- 
mitted to each other. In a moment, as though in response 
to our remarks, she raised her hand — the hand which in 
earth-life had become so deformed with paralysis as to have 
brought the middle joints of the fingers down upon the 
wrist — a position reached only through the intensest tor- 
ture, prolonged for three years. As she reached to us this 
distorted hand, we exclaimed, in one breath, ' Oh, that is 
indeed mother's hand ! ' She bowed, and then again held 
it towards us. We then said, ' Mother's hand is not de- 
formed in spirit-life, is it?' She instantly extended it 
again, in a fair and beautiful outline." 

The late Luther Park, of Boston, informed me that on 
one occasion, D. D. Home being the medium, a spirit, 
claiming to be Mr. Park's father, presented a proof of his 
identity by showing his hand, in which there was a peculiar 
malformation of the thumb. 

But how are we to explain the contradictions and incon- 
sistencies in the declarations of trance-mediums as to their 
" controls," if we take the ground that their claim is to be 
accepted without question? A medium in New York, 
claiming to speak under the control of Parker, may directly 
contradict a medium in Chicago, making the same claim. 
How shall we decide as to which is right? By the internal 
evidence ? Undoubtedly. But then we might not decide in 
favor of either. The two may be equally honest and capa- 



248 SPIRIT-COMMUNICATIONS. 

ble ; but one of them must be in error. I believe that both 
may be in error, and both sincere. 

" How so? " it is asked. " The medium, by the hypoth- 
esis, is honest. Why, then, does his spirit, in the state of 
unconscious trance, present itself as Parker or Franklin? 
Truthful in the normal state, why is it guilt} r of a falsehood 
in the abnormal? Is it the body that keeps it straight? 
When freed from its control, does it act a part, or play the 
fool, or take pleasure in deceit? " 

To all this it would be sufficient to reply, We merely 
give the fact ; the explanation of it may be difficult, but 
the fact itself is not affected thereby. Which of the me- 
diums is right in regard to identity of control? Obviously 
we are thrown back on our human reason for a decision. 
Forever apt and true, therefore, is that injunction from the 
evangelist John, "Beloved, believe not eveiy spirit, but 
try the spirits whether they are of God ; because many 
false prophets are gone out into the world." 

I am aware that some mediums, honestly claiming to get 
their inspiration from the spirit- world, reject Christ's doc- 
trine of the existence of malevolent spirits. That such 
spirits are kept in check by natural laws, I do not doubt ; 
that they exist is, I fear, too true. Mrs. Maria M. King, 
one of the ablest of our American intuitionalists, says : 
' ' The medium who is susceptible to the influence of a be- 
neficent spirit sufficiently to become his subject, is safe 
from the influence of malignant spirits, from several 
causes." All this ma} T be true, and Mrs. King would here 
seem to admit that there are such things as malignant, or, 
as she elsewhere calls them, " undeveloped" spirits. That 
these may interfere in the affairs of mortals, and do some 
mischief, she also admits. So that, after all, there is but a 
slight shade of difference — that convej^ed in the words evil 
and undeveloped — in our views. That I ma}^ do justice to 
her opinions, I quote her words : 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 249 

" What is claimed in the philosoplry I have been instru- 
mental in giving is, that civilization in the spiritual state 
does what civilization in the material state aims to do. 
Being spiritual and higher in the strictest sense, it can do 
more than has yet been done on earth in dealing with ele- 
ments of evil and ignorance. Superior methods of dealing 
with the lowly have been developed in that life, where 
nothing can be concealed from those whose duty it is to 
oversee society there. Men disrobed of materiality come 
more readily under the control of spirits of strong psycho- 
logical power, and this power is used for good to all in 
earth and spirit life, as a safe and wise policy dictates." 

I do not accept the theory, sometimes advanced, that 
our evil dispositions are not carried with us into the spirit- 
world ; that with the loss of our physical appetites, we lose 
all those inducements to evil by which we have been beset 
in the earth-life. Be not deceived. Between the earth-life 
and the proximate spirit-life there is a correspondence of 
all things, whether good or evil ; and the evil we have not 
put under subjection to the higher faculties in this life will 
go with us as a part of our incumbrances into the next, 
there to be got rid of only by our own efforts and the 
energy of our own volition. 

Still I admit that man is a complex being, and that he 
may be interiorly much better or much worse than he ap- 
pears to be, to himself and others, in his normal state. 
Some saints may find themselves sinners, and some sinners 
saints, in the life where all disguises will be stripped off. 

In the mystery of this hidden, interior state may lie 
involved one of the solutions of the question, Why can we 
not trust the assertions of trance-mediums as to their 
"controls"? There are mental phenomena in abundance 
which will analogical^ justify us in the assumption that 
the medium himself may be innocently the subject of a 
self-imposed delusion as to identity. And then the high 
probability that there are unscrupulous spirits, who, to win 
attention, will assume the name of some great man, must 



250 SPIRIT-COMMUNICATIONS. 

not be left out of the account. If a human mesmerizer 
can create delusions in the mind of his subject, why may 
not a spirit-mesmerizer be able to do as much? That he 
has this power is made more than probable by a multitude 
of well-known facts. 

There are higher and lower grades of consciousness, or 
states of mental activity, than the normal, as somnambulism 
and mesmerism have proved ; and these grades, though in 
certain moments of psj'chical illumination they may be 
fused into a unity, may be quite distinct from our habitual 
state of mental activity. That we have psychical powers 
of which we have ordinarily no conception, is a truth which 
Plato, Leibnitz, and Schelling have all taught. Our mod- 
ern phenomena confirm it. 

" How is it," we are asked, " that an uneducated woman 
can, when medially impressed, give forth utterances far 
transcending all that she knows or is capable of in her 
normal state ? " The answer is : She may have got much 
from her own psychometric appropriations, practised inde- 
pendently of her normal consciousness ; or she may, in 
some instances, be influenced by a spirit, either truthful or 
deceptive. 

One of the daughters of my valued correspondent, the 
late William Howitt, a well-known English author, was a 
mesmeric sensitive. Howitt told Professor W. D. Gun- 
ning, whose words (slightly abridged) I here use, that, on 
one occasion, his daughter, being entranced, wrote a com- 
munication signed with the name of her brother, supposed 
to be in Australia. The import was, that he had been 
drowned a few days before in a lake. Dates and details 
were given. The parents could only wait, as there was 
then no trans-oceanic telegraph. Months passed, and at 
last a letter came from a nephew in Melbourne, bearing the 
tidings that their son had been drowned on such a day, in 
such a lake, under such and such circumstances. Date, 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 251 

place, and all the essential details were the same as those 
given months before through the daughter. Howitt be- 
lieved that the freed spirit of his son influenced the sister 
to write ; and I know of no explanation more rational than 
this. 

Plutarch, born about 50 a. d., discusses the subject of 
spirit-identity. In one of his dialogues an interlocutor 
says: "Wiry should we seek to deprive these souls that 
are still in the body (human beings) of that power by 
which the former (freed spirits) know future events, and 
are able to announce them? Is it not probable that the 
soul gains a new power of prophecy after separation from 
the bod}f, and which it did not possess before? We may 
rather conclude that it had all its powers, though in a 
lesser perfection, during its union with the body." 

Again Plutarch says: " If the demons, being human 
spirits disembodied, may foresee and foretell human events, 
wiry may not human spirits, embodied, possess a similar 
power? Our souls indeed are interiorly endowed with this 
power." At the same time, as I have already shown, he 
takes the ground, that the medium may not unfrequently be 
impressed by spirits to utter their thoughts, if not their 
exact language. 

Porphyry (born 233 a. d.) tells how the "demon" 
(spirit) sometimes speaks through the mouth of the "re- 
cipient " (medium) who is entranced ; sometimes presents 
himself in- an immaterial or even material form. The 
trance state is mixed with " exhausting agitation or 
struggle." Right choice of time and circumstances for 
inducing the trance state, and obtaining oracular replies, 
is, he says, most important, for a Pythian priestess (me- 
dium), compelled to prophesy (speak in trance) while under 
control of an alien spirit, died ; and under unfavorable con- 
ditions, " the spirit would warn the auditors that he could 
not give information, or even that he would certainly tell 



252 SPIRIT-COMMUNICATIONS. 

falsehoods on that particular occasion." " On descending 
into our atmosphere the spirits become subject to the laws 
and influences that rule mankind . . . and then a confusion 
occurs ; therefore, in such cases, the prudent inquirer 
should defer his researches : a rule with which inexperienced 
investigators fail to comply." 

Given a favorable day and a " guiltless intermediary" (a 
true medium), "some confined space would then be se- 
lected, so that the influence should not be too widely dif- 
fused." This place was sometimes made dark, and the 
spirit was invoked with " yells and singing." During this 
singing the medium " falls into an abnormal slumber, which 
extinguishes for the time his own identity and allows the 
spirit to speak through his lips," or, in the exact words of 
Porphyry, " to contrive a voice for himself through a mortal 
instrument." * 

Anaxagoras, who lived 500 years before Christ, and who 
maintained that pure mind, free from all material concre- 
tions, governs the universe, teaches that the human soul 
has powers of divination in its own right, and independent 
of what it ma}' get from spirits no longer earth-bound. 
P3 T thagoras held a like belief. 

"To the question Qui bono morally, it is but a hollow 
answer that Spiritualism returns," sa} r s one of our reverend 
assailants. To call upon us to explain what's the use of it, 
in regard to an}^ fact of nature, is not a philosophical but a 
childish objection. Nature does not need our human apol- 
ogies. If our facts occur, they must be as justifiable mor- 
ally as the facts of humanity itself. To say that they re- 
turn a hollow answer to the question Qui bono f is simply to 
make human deafness or blindness the measure of Infinite 
wisdom. 

These questions, Wliat good has it done? or, Has not its 

* For these passages from Porphyry I am indebted to Mr. F. W. H. Myers's 
able essay on " The Greek Oracles." 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 253 

influence been evil? are impertinent, since the only scientific 
question is at present, Is it true ? The notion that it may 
be true, and 3-et something very bad, seems to spring from 
a distrust that the cosmos is not rightly named ; that it has 
no divine Orderer ; or that He allows things to take place 
not at all consistent with clerical notions of spiritual pro- 
priety. 

Perhaps with the advance of our own intelligence the Qui 
bono question will be answered. Perhaps Spiritualism 
comes fraught with divine instruction to our favored age, 
and if we fail to listen to its lesson, the loss will be our 
own. It is surprising how persistently men otherwise sensi- 
ble bring up this Qui bono objection. Referring to certain 
spiritual phenomena an editor remarks : i ' Their existence 
as a class once being granted, we fail to discover among the 
facts a single one possessing either esthetic beaiurv, intel- 
lectual original^, or material usefulness." To all which 
the obvious reply is : If the facts are admitted, as you 
grant, then yonr complaint of their nonconform^ with 3-our 
esthetic sensibilities should be addressed to the Author of 
Nature, and not to the recorder of the facts. 

In a discourse before the " Concord School of Philoso- 
phy" (1880), the Rev. Dr. F. D. Hedge remarked of Spir- 
itualism : " Science has examined its pretensions and pro- 
nounced them groundless." I am unwilling to suppose that 
Dr. Hedge would wilfully misrepresent a fact, but the re- 
verse of what he here affirms is the truth. Eminent men 
of science are every day contradicting his assertion ; and I 
am confident that Dr. Hedge cannot name one man of high 
scientific authority who has ever carefully investigated Spir- 
itualism and pronounced it " groundless." Dr. G. Bloecle, 
a well-known German investigator, resident in Brooklyn, 
N. Y., writes me that his correspondent, Zollner, Professor 
of Physics and Astronomy in the Universnyv of Leipzig, 
describes the state of Spiritualism in Germany (August, 



254 SPIRIT-COMMUNICATIONS. 

1880) as being such as to interest the best scientific minds ; 
and I learn that " the }'0ung men have caught the infec- 
tion, and are experimenting for themselves." 

The so-called "investigations" of Huxley and Tyndall 
were, if we may credit their own accounts, farcically super- 
ficial. The de liaut en has air with which these and other 
specialists, really knowing nothing of our facts, affect to 
look down on them, widely attested as they are, seems to 
partake at once of arrogance and alarm. The German 
Schopenhauer says : "The gentlemen of the crucible and 
the retort must bring it home to themselves that mere 
chemistry may enable a man to be an apothecary, but that 
it does not make him a philosopher. Certain kindred spirits 
among the naturalists, too, should understand that a man 
may be a consummate zoologist, have the sixty sorts of 
apes strung together in perfect order, yet, knowing nothing 
besides, be on the whole an ignorant man, merely one of 
the vulgar." 

In reply to a complaint that spiritual communications are 
not to be trusted, my friend Thomas Shorter wisely re- 
marked : " Well, perhaps that is the very lesson they were 
chieflv designed to teach }~ou." An intelligence claiming 
to be spiritual gave the following through a planchette : 

"It is one of the important providential designs of these 
manifestations to teach mankind that spirits in general 
maintain the characters that they formed to themselves 
during their earthly life — that, indeed, they are the identi- 
cal persons the}' were while dwelling in the flesh — hence, 
that while there are just, truthful, wise, and Christian spir- 
its, there are also spirits addicted to tying, profanity, ob- 
scenity, mischief, and violence, and spirits who den}* God 
and religion, just as they did while in your world. It has 
become very necessar}- for mankind to know all this ; it 
certainly could in no other way be so effectually made 
known as by an actual manifestation of it ; and it is just as 
necessary that }'Ou should see the dark side as the bright 
side of the picture." 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 255 

That there are some medial communications not un- 
worthy the powers of what we might suppose to be an ad- 
vanced spirit, is a fact which any candid person of good 
literary judgment will, on examination, have to admit. 

The utterances of trance-mediums at times carry with 
them, by the force of internal evidence, the conviction of 
the identhy of the communicating spirit. Circumstances 
foreign to the medium's knowledge, and not only unknown 
to the sitter, but contrary to his own belief, are brought up, 
and subsequently found b}' him to be true. Mrs. Brown 
(formerly Mrs. Fish), when in New York, in 1852, used to 
give messages which bore the stamp of genuineness. One 
evening while Mr. E. W. Capron, author of " Modern Spir- 
itualism, its Facts and Fanaticisms " (1855), was visiting 
her, two 3 T oung men from Tennessee came in. One of 
them asked if a spirit could communicate with him, and 
was answered in the affirmative. "What spirit is it?" 
"Your father." The young man then wrote down on a 
piece of paper the following question : ' ' Ity what means did 
you die ? " Immediately the alphabet was called for, and 
the word poisoned spelled out. The young man started 
with evident astonishment, for he did not anticipate so 
prompt and correct a reply. He then asked if his father 
had anything to communicate to him, and received the fol- 
lowing : 

" My son, lift your thoughts to God and remember your 
wrongs no more. To dwell upon the past will retard your 
progress and blight 3 T our future prospects. Your path leads 
on to glory ; then labor to overcome evil with good, and a 
crown of righteousness will be yours in time and eternity. 
Your affectionate father, 

Henry Champion." 

The young man then said that his father was murdered 
by poison administered by a brother, who had escaped the 
penalty of the law. The son declared that he had been for 



256 SPIRIT-COMMUNICATIONS. 

3~ears determined on avenging his father's death. Unlike 
Hamlet's spirit-father, this one advised his son to dispel all 
vindictive feelings, and the son declared that from that 
hour his schemes of revenge would be given up. Here we 
have all the elements of a genuine communication : remark- 
able clairvo3*ance, noble, christian advice, forgiveness of an 
injury, good plain English, and marks of affection. 

A little girl was present with her father, both unknown 
to Mrs. Brown. The little girl's hand was moved, and she 
gave signs of being a sensitive for writing. The following 
kind admonition was then spelled out to the father through 
Mrs. Brown : 

" I feel deeply interested in 3* our little daughter. I want 
you, therefore, to be led according to } T our own good judg- 
ment and reason in regard to taking her into promiscuous 
parties. She should not always be led 03* advice which she 
thinks comes from pure and elevated spirits. M3* dear David, 
I will give you a rule by which you and Mary shall always 
be guided, as 3'ou are responsible for the protection and 
elevation of your children. When a spirit assumes author- 
ity in giving directions, follow not such direction. God 
made 3*011 a free man, and he has given 3*011 light and liberty 
to act accordingly. When a spirit speaks unreasonable 
things, be kind to him, but maintain your own ground, and 
gently lead him along in the paths of progression." 

In this case, the names of " David " and " Mary " were 
entirety unknown to the medium, or to any of the company 
present except the ones to whom the message was delivered. 
Instances like these are not so rare as many may sup- 
pose. The intent is good, the advice excellent, and the 
language unexceptionable. The clairvoyance implied in 
the knowledge of the names of father and daughter is 
another reason why the communication might be safely 
accepted as genuine. The internal evidence in both these 
cases is very strong, aud would justify the parties receiving 
the messages in having faith in their supposed origin. 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 257 

Before me is a pamphlet of communications compiled by 
my friend, Thomas R. Hazard, of Rhode Island, from the 
utterances of the late John C. Grinnell, of Newport, R. I., 
while apparently in an unconscious state. Let us see if they 
are utterly devoid of sense and purpose : 

"... The soul-body that is born with the child has a 
greater effect on its destiny in the spirit- world than its edu- 
cation on earth has, although it carries its earthly proclivi- 
ties with it. These causes and effects should be under- 
stood, in order to understand the laws of progression. . . . 

"Thus the soul and spirit unite and constitute an in- 
dividual immortal being. If the spirit did not unite with 
and take the soul with it, there would be no individuality 
for the spirit to communicate through, but it would be a 
mere essence floating about, as it were, a thing of life 
without consciousness. Thus the soul is the spirit-body not 
only in earth-life, but in immortal life through eternity. . . . 

' ' Everything in existence is continually revolving and 
drawn onward to higher conditions of finer and finer qual- 
ities of spirit magnetism, leaving the grosser to assist in 
advancing states of being still more gross. There can be 
no stillness or cessation to the action of the soul, nor can 
there be to the inspiration of the spirit within the soul. 
For the spirit must, b}^ divine love, ever vibrate and strive 
within the soul, to qualify it for its immortal condition. . . . 

"The spirit constitutes the light and life within, whilst 
the individual soul has the power to give itself &ny direc- 
tion, whether for good or evil, it chooses He who 

accepts his soul's inspiration is a free man, but not other- 
wise, as he has to conform to other personalities that go to 
make up that which he might call his own, through the in- 
grafting of their ideas on his individual^ 7 or soul memory. 
. . . When man is thus individualized, the simplicity and 
divine harmony of his nature become a fountain of joy, 
whence ever flows the expression, I am free I I am free ! 
Whilst to those whose souls have become darkened and 
shackled, as it were, by the acceptance of the personal 
teachings or ideas of their fellow-mortals, life becomes the 
enjoyment of a dream rather than a reality. . . . 

" The spirit is the entire life of the soul and the body, 
and without it nothing whatever can be uttered. But, al« 
17 



258 SPIRIT-COMMUNICATIONS. 

though the dictates of the spirit are alwa} T s truthful, still 
the same power that is couferrecl ou the soul to accept and 
give forth the truth, rua}^ be, and is in countless instances, 
directed through the promptings of its coarser desires into 
false channels of expression and communication, and thus 
used for sinister purposes and ends. In striving to express 
the truth through the soul organization, we thus see that 
spirit has many counteracting influences to contend with, 
which cause many unreliable communications both in the 
material and spirit world. . . . 

" The kingdom of God is without and within. As 
existence expresses everything that is individual, so does 
spirit everything that is infinite and divine. As we could 
have no life without the Divine Spirit, so we could have no 
conscious existence without the individual soul. Thus 
spirit and existence make up the great divine attribute of 
the Supreme Being. . . . 

"As the life and the spirit are imparted to existence, 
so each soul or individuality has a separate self- existence, 
but all under the control of the Divine Spirit. But all 
quality of soul is not all the same, as it depends upon the 
amount of inspiration that each individual soul has re- 
ceived and accepted of the spirit, — a portion of which is 
given to all, and which in itself is always the same pure 
and undefiled essence, as is the great Fountain of all spirit 
whence it is derived. . . . 

' ; Throughout all existence it is the spirit that makes 
the shape or form of the thing that exists, whether it be a 
grain of sand or a living being.* As all existence is but an 
expression of the divine will, so should each individual 
existence that has a larger share of the divine expression 
within itself, impart of its abundance to those who have 
less. None should be turned awa} T . . . . 

"We are all independent, both in the structure of our 
individual being and in our individual progress, and con- 

* G. F. Fechner, the eminent German physicist and philosopher, who, as the 
N. T. Nation says, "scandalized German society by entering the ranks of the 
Spiritualists," in 1877, teaches "that every diamond, every crystal, every plant 
and star, has its own individual soul, besides man and the animals; that there is 
a hierarchy of souls from the lowest forms of matter up to the world-soul; and 
that the spirits of the departed hold psychic communication with souls that are 
still connected with a human body." 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 259 

sequently we must ever become the architect of our soul's 
unfoldment and progress. . . . As we have the power to 
seclude and darken the spirit in the cloud of our indi- 
vidual selfishness, so too we have the power to shut our- 
selves out from a higher and more celestial spirit-knowl- 
edge. So it depends upon ourselves to choose what we 
shall be." 

The thought here is clearly combed, and could have 
come from no ordinary mind. Of the medium, Mr. Haz- 
ard tells us : "He was from a child among the poorest of 
the poor, and almost wholly uneducated, never having been 
to school six months in his life. He had but little mental 
abilhVv of any kind." The psychological theorj", of which 
this illiterate individual was the utterer, w r ould seem to be 
like that of Paul, who, in his first epistle to the Thessa- 
lonians (v. 23), writes : " And the very God of peace sanc- 
tify 3'ou wholly ; and I pray God } T our lOhole spirit and soul 
and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." Here we have the trichotomy of (1) 
spirit (divinely influent, primary, life-giving) ; (2) soul or 
spirit-body (psycho-plrysical, organic, intermediary, essen- 
tially immortal, but potentially mutable in its corporeal 
relations) ; (3) earth-body (physical, ultimate, chemical, 
and transitory in its parts, but indestructible as to its dis- 
sipated atomic constituents) . Thus the action of the spir- 
itual upon the material, or the non-atomic upon the atomic, 
becomes intelligible by virtue of the intervening link, and 
the puzzle of the metaphysicians, who marvel how mind 
can rule matter, is solved. 

I am indebted to my esteemed friend, the Rev. Samuel 
Watson, of Memphis, Tenn., formerly of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, for calling m c y attention to the following 
remarkable passage in the writings of John Wesley, who, 
commenting on the verse I have quoted from Paul, enumer- 
ating spirit, soul, and body as a trinity, says : 



260 SPIRIT-COMMUNICATIONS. 

" Is not the bod}' that portion of organized matter which 
eveiy man receives in the womb — with which he is born 
into the world, and which he carries with him to the grave? 
At present it is connected with flesh and blood, but these 
are not the body — they are only the tern poraiy clothing, 
which it wholly puts off at the grave. The soul seems to be 
the immediate clothing of the spirit, the vehicle with which 
it is connected from its first existence, and which is never 
separated from it either in life or in death. Probably it 
consists of ethereal or electric, the purest of all matter. It 
does not seem to be affected by the death of the body, but 
envelops the separate as it does the embodied spirit." 

Critically analyzed, the word to, in the third line, should 
be beyond, as it contradicts the plain meaning of the whole. 
Wesley, as the reader already knows, had the spiritual 
phenomena in his own family, and declared that " with his 
latest breath " he should " protest against giving up to in- 
fidels these proofs of the soul's immortality." * 

This, then, is the summing up : — (1) It does not require 
the theory of independent spirits to explain a large major- 
ity of the phenomena we get through mediums for writing 
by their own hands or for so-called trance-speaking. (2) 
That mediums may be impressed by spirits to personate 
them, or to utter their thoughts, or to write their words, is 
however distinctly admitted. (3) Man being a spirit, even 
while fettered to matter, has spiritual faculties, which, in 
certain abnormal states, may be manifested. (4) A trance- 
medium, in a state of limited consciousness, may utter 
thoughts generated or appropriated by himself in another 

* In February, 1771, Swedenborg wrote to Wesley: " I have been informed 
in tbe world of spirits that you have a strong desire to converse with me. I 
shall be happy to see you, if you will favor me with a visit." Wesley confessed 
he had wished to see Swedenborg, but had mentioned his wish to no one. He 
wrote that his engagements were such he could not be in London for six 
months. Swedenborg replied that a visit would then be too late, as he should 
be in the spirit-world March 29th, never more to return. Wesley could not 
break his other engagements, and so they never met. Swedenborg died the 
day he had named. 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 261 

and discrete state of consciousness ; and he maj^ himself 
originate the impression that he is uttering the thoughts of 
some spirit, once eminent in the earth-life. It is not de- 
nied, however, that the false impression may be insinuated 
b}' some independent spirit ; nor is it denied that the ' ' con- 
trol " may, in rare instances, be the individual he medially 
claims to be. (5) The phenomena of distinct states of con- 
sciousness must be studied for more light upon all these 
questions. 

In an article in Scribner's Magazine, charging Spiritual- 
ists with accepting "an fact that which only has its lying 
semblance," Dr. Holland, the editor, a believer in the Bible, 
tells us that he does not regard our facts as a priori im- 
probable. He says : 

' ' In both the Old and the New Testament we have mul- 
tiplied records of the communications of spiritual existences 
with men and women in the flesh. The doctrine of demo- 
niacal possession is taught with great distinctness. The 
ministry of angels, the return to the earth of those long 
dead, familiar intercourse with Christ after his resurrection, 
are all in the line of phenomena claimed as genuine by mod- 
ern Spiritualists. It is, or would seem to be, easy for a 
Christian to believe that visitants from the unseen world 
are about him, influencing his mind, and endeavoring to 
make themselves known. That is precisely what they used 
to do in the olden time. Why should they not do it now 
as well as they did it then ? " 

This question of his own putting Dr. Holland makes no 
attempt to answer. Thus it will be seen that he is quite 
willing to receive from David, Ezekiel, Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John, accounts of phenomena that happened 
centuries ago ; but similar phenomena, vouched for by many 
of the principal scientific men of our own day, he rejects 
as " lying semblances." That a writing came to Jehoram 
from Elijah, the prophet, in the spirit-world, is quite credi- 
ble ; but that independent writing came through Gulden- 



262 ZOLLNER GRASPS A SPIRIT-HAND. 

stubbe, Watkins, Powell, Phillips, Mrs. Simpson, Mrs. 
Mosser, and Slade, must be rejected as a delusion. 

It has been seen that some of the leading German phys- 
icists admit our phenomena. Zollner testifies to the spirit- 
hand. He says in his " Transcendental Physics," as 
translated by Charles Carleton Massey, of London, a philo- 
sophic student and a close observer of our phenomena : 

" Slade sat at his usual place; at his right Frau von 
Hoffman, I next, and Herr von Hoffman at my right. We 
had already laid our hands, linked together, on the table, 
when I remarked it was a pity we had forgotten to place a 
small hand-bell on the table. At the same moment it be- 
gan ringing in the corner of the room at my right front, at 
least two metres from the middle of the table ; and the 
room being faintly illuminated by gaslight from the street, 
we saw a small hand-bell slowly hover down from the 
stand on which it stood, lay itself down on the carpet of 
the floor, and move itself forward by jerks, till it got under 
our table. Here immediately it began ringing in the most 
lively manner, and while we kept our hands joined together 
as above described on the table, a hand suddenly appeared 
through an opening in the middle of the curtain with the 
bell, which it placed on the middle of the table in front of 
us. I hereupon expressed the wish to be allowed to hold 
that hand once firmly in my own. I had scarcely said this, 
when the hand appeared again out of the opening, and 
now, while with the palm of my left hand I covered and 
held fast both Slade's hands, with my right I seized the 
hand protruded from the opening, and thus shook hands 
with a friend from the other world. It had quite a living 
warmth, and returned my pressure heartily." 

From St. Petersburg we get the testimony of Boutlerof, 
Wagner, and Aksakow to similar phenomena. Aksakow, 
Imperial Privy Counsellor, testifies to the slate-writing 
phenomenon, as got by the Grand Duke Constantine. He 
says: "I can, as a witness, testify that the writing was 
produced upon a slate which the Grand Duke alone held 
under and close to the table, while Slade's hands were on 






CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 263 

the table." This corresponds to my experiment with Wat- 
kins, only I held the slate unconditionally open to the light 
in my left hand, the medium standing four feet off, and not 
touching the slate. 

Here is what William Crookes, F.E.S., has to say 
(1874) in regard to his experience with the so-called spirit- 
hand : 

" Under the strictest test conditions, I have more than 
once had a solid, self-luminous, ciystalline body placed in 
my hand by a hand which did not belong to any person in 
the room. In the light I have seen a luminous cloud hover 
over a heliotrope on a side-table, break a sprig off, and 
carry the sprig to a lady ; and on some occasions I have 
seen a similar luminous cloud visibly condense to the form 
of a hand, and cany small objects about." 

The testimony in regard to this phenomenon of the ma- 
terialized hand is so ample that I should be justified in 
including it as part of a scientific basis. For the past 
twenty-five years I have repeatedly seen or felt the materi- 
alized hand under test conditions. 

The full fruits of these revelations of spirit power, with 
the philosoplry that must grow out of them, under the fear- 
less auspices of modern science, unchecked by the super- 
stitious fears which paralyzed investigation in ancient and 
mediaeval times, must be the result of man}^ conflicts with 
unbelief and of a long lapse of time. The misconceptions 
and follies which attend the science in its inchoate stage, 
are the unavoidable accompaniments of its transitional 
development. They must give way eventually to an an- 
thropology based on accepted facts, and comprehending, in 
its synthesis, the spiritual, psychical, and physical nature 
of man. 

Thus far the assailants of spiritualism have done nothing 
but call it hard names. They have confounded with the 
great subject itself the human abuses, follies, and errors 
attending it, but have not solved or made less credible one 



264 CLERICAL OBJECTIONS. 

of our facts ; have not accounted for the simplest of our 
phenomena ; and 3^et they think to put a stop to investiga- 
tion by telling us of its evils and dangers. 

" The danger from Spiritualism," sa} T s the editor of 
Sunday Afternoon, " consists chiefly in the ungirtness it 
induces in all thought and conduct ; the evil it has wrought 
in this direction is immense." Which, being interpreted, 
means : Spiritualism, like every great emancipating truth, 
is an iconoclast and a revolutionist. It frees men from 
old shackles of doctrine, and makes them, what they ought 
to be, free-thinkers, in the large and good sense. In the 
casting off of shackles, some undisciplined minds maj 7 be 
mischievously affected ; just as in a wholesome national 
revolution mischief may be wrought b}^ bringing the scum 
to the top, and tempting thieves and demagogues with op- 
portunities which they might not have had under a despot- 
ism. And so when the editor last quoted says that Spirit- 
ualism has wrought immense evil, all the significance of the 
declaration is in its analogy with the assertion that the 
American revolution, or the Lutheran reformation, did the 
same. If Spiritualism in this sense has done harm, the 
good it has clone, and is likely to do, may preponderate. 

All this short-sighted antagonism is unphilosophical and 
unjust. Spiritualism is a synthesis of facts, and every 
investigator of those facts is at liberty to put upon them 
what construction he pleases. My own inference is, that 
they conclusively prove that natural phenomena or material 
existences are the raiment or visible appearance of some 
inner invisible power ; that when we see a material hand, 
replete with life, and obedient to will, created in the void 
air, without tricks or illusions of any kind, we have reason to 
infer that there is a real form and a real intelligence inte- 
rior to or ruling the outward material member, in such a 
case ; that the matter used is transient, fleeting, adjective, to 
the underlying, substantive hand of the spirit ; or else that 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 265 

the spirit, in its power over matter, can independently 
present a simulacrum of the mortal hand, and make it in- 
dicative of mind and life. 

In a communication to the Royal Society (1879) William 
Crookes gives a condensed summary of the evidence in 
proof of the existence of a fourth state of matter. In 
conclusion he saj's : 

" That which we call matter is nothing more than the 
effect upon our senses of the movements of molecules. 
The space covered by the motion of molecules has no more 
right to be called matter than the air traversed by a rifle- 
bullet has to be called lead. From this point of view, then, 
matter is but a mode of motion ; at the absolute zero of 
temperature the inter-molecular movement would stop, and, 
although something retaining the properties of inertia and 
weight would remain, matter, as we know it, would cease 
to exist." 

These considerations help us to a nearer comprehension 
of the fact that to spirit-power matter is a thing very dif- 
ferent from what it is to our earth-bound faculties. 
[Some persons who admit our phenomena are disposed to 
refer them wholly to the action of evil spirits. The_Cath- 
olic doctors do this very generally, though they make an 
exception when the manifestations favor their own religious 
viewsT7 Christ was more liberal. That he believed in- 
tensely in the action of evil spirits is manifest. He said, 
" Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have thee, that he 
may sift thee as wheat ; but I have prayed for thee that thy 
faith fail not." Again: "Get thee behind me, Satan." 
Again : ' ' This is 3-our hour and that of the powers of 
darkness." And so Paul: "We are not wrestling with 
flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, and the 
leaders of the darkness of this world, and against wicked 
spirits in high places." 

* M. Camille Flammarion, the eminent French astronomer, writes (1880): "It 
is by the study of Spiritualism that Mr. Crookes has been led to his magnifi* 
cent discoveries." 



266 Christ's spiritual doctrine. 






But that Christ and his apostles also believed in a coun- 
teracting- force of good spirits is apparent from many pas- 
sages. To Nathaniel he said: "Thou shalt see greater 
things than . these. Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, 
and angels of God ascending and descending on the Son 
of man." Recall also the passage where he says of chil- 
dren : "Despise not one of these little ones; for I say 
unto you, that in heaven their angels (guardian spirits) do 
alwaj^s behold the face of my Father." When he was 
transfigured on the mount, Moses and Elijah appeared to 
him. In the garden, an angel (spirit — see Rev. xxii. 9) 
appeared and ministered to him. Thus it will be seen that 
those priests who hold that all the spirits communicating 
with the laity must needs be evil, can hardty make it appear 
that they have Christ's authorit} T on their side. 

The Rev. Joseph Cook has drawn down upon himself the 
attacks of some of his evangelical brethren because he and 
his friends had the candor and the courage to testify to 
certain objective phenomena which they witnessed in my 
library. Upon these they are at liberty to put what con- 
struction they please ; to explain them by an undiscovered 
psychic force, or by the co-operation of evil spirits, or by 
nothing in particular. It is enough for Spiritualism that 
they have not ignored or misrepresented what actually 
occurred. 

That Mr. Cook, accepting the Bible as infallible, is justi- 
fied in his fears, as to the ill effects of Spiritualism, by the 
cautions against necromancy which he finds in the Old 
Testament, no one will deny. I think that we Spiritualists 
can afford to be denounced as meddling with forbidden 
ke}'s, so long as he has had the honesty and the intrepidity 
to testif} T to occurrences the very mention of which is an 
offence to many, and the admission of which he knew 
might lead to unjust aspersions upon his motives. These, 
I cannot doubt, were the promptings of an earnest and 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 267 

disinterested truth-seeker, not stopping to weigh adverse 
consequences, and not hesitating to proclaim what he had 
witnessed. I shall not grudge him the exercise of the 
same fearlessness in construing the phenomena, which he 
has shown in testifying to them, however widely I may 
differ from his interpretations. 

Are there no cases in the Church, differing from that of 
Mr. Cook only in the fact that the recipients of the truth 
keep it to themselves? Yes, there are many such. I have 
myself been present at seances with two eminent Unitarian 
clergymen, now deceased, — one the Rev. Dr. Hall, of 
Dorchester, Mass., the other the Rev. Dr. George Putnam, 
of Roxbury, — both of whom admitted to me that they 
accepted the phenomena as genuine, beyond all possibility 
of collusion or trick. Miss Jennie Lord, now Mrs. Webb, 
was the medium, and, though it was a dark circle, the evi- 
dences of a preterhuman power at work that could see in 
the dark as well as in the light, were conclusive. The tan- 
gible spirit-hand, the playing on instruments, the placing 
of a full tumbler of water at the lips of the different sit- 
ters, so that not a drop was spilled, the violent, repeated 
dashing of the tambourine on the table, and then on the 
floor, with inconceivable swiftness, without touching one 
of the hands placed on the table, — and all this in the 
dark, and while the medium was held, — were phenomena 
that must have impressed the most apathetic as preter- 
human. Both these reverend doctors, while admitting the 
genuineness of what transpired, excused themselves from 
saying anything about it publiclv, on the ground that it 
would involve them in controversy ; that it was too ' ' big a 
subject " for them to take up at their age ; that they could 
not investigate further without giving to it more- time 
than they could spare from their parochial duties, &c. 
Both were noble, sincere men, and if they had been as 
young and as daring as Mr. Cook, they would doubtless 



268 PERSONAL TESTINGS. 

not have allowed the phenomena to remain sterile in their 
minds. 

I also took the well-known Edinburgh author and pub- 
lisher, the late Robert Chambers, then in America, to wit- 
ness the manifestations in Miss Lord's presence. But he 
was already a Spiritualist, and had no hesitation in recog- 
nizing them as among the most convincing he had ever 
experienced. His views and arguments in regard to the 
phenomena are clearly set forth in his Introduction to the 
second volume of the Life of D. D. Home, the celebrated 
medium. 

I subsequently tested the phenomena through Miss Lord 
several times in my own library, when only my own family 
and a single friend were present. There was no conceiva- 
ble chance for an abettor. Under test conditions, and 
while the medium's hands and feet were held, a large bass- 
viol was taken from the corner of the room and pla} T ed on 
vigorously and well. Several familiar psalm tunes, among 
them " Coronation," were accurately given. That it was a 
preterhuman performance (judging human capacity solely 
by what science admits) I absolutely know. The spirit 
operator first touched us all on the head with the viol-bow. 
The spirit-hand, twice as large as that of the medium, 
proved its tangibility by being placed repeatedly on our 
heads ; it took down the hair of two ladies present, and care- 
fully put it up again, and indicated in various ways the intel- 
ligence guiding it — and all this while the medium was held. 

If any other witness from the Church is wanted besides 
Mr. Cook, I could refer the curious to the estimable Epis- 
copal bishop of Rhode Island, Mr. Clark. Towards "in- 
terviewers " he may be reticent ; but to those in his confi- 
dence he may narrate experiences far transcending those to 
which Mr. Cook has testified — experiences which, if ac- 
cepted, make credible the re-appearance of Christ in the 
room with closed doors. 



CUMULATIVE TESTIMONY. 269 

Bishop Clark preaches openly the Pauline doctrine of a 
spiritual body ; thus rejecting or superseding the unscien- 
tific notion of a re-composition of the material remains. 
His extreme spiritualistic views and his long entertained 
convictions are well known to his brethren ; and there has 
been question occasionally of a convocation to consider the 
heresy in his case ; but he has not yet been summoned to 
the bar for examination, and I hardly think the indiscretion 
will ever be attempted. In England not a few clerg3 T men 
of the established church are avowed Spiritualists. But if 
the elasticity of that church prevents its touching Bishop 
Colenso, it may well spare the recipient of the simple belief 
in continuous life, as justified bj T the demonstrated facts of 
Spiritualism. 

An unprofessional medium testifies that the following 
words came to him from a spirit : ' ' The spiritual body is 
made up by deposits of human thought even as the human 
material body is sustained bj T food. Hence the thoughts 
and affections of the heart go to construct the spirit-bod3 T , 
enter into it, become it. I warn you how you indulge in 
thoughts that are evil. The spiritual body does not change 
as easily as 3*011 imagine." 

Edmund Spenser, one of the most medially gifted of 
poets, and who tells us that " all that's good is beautiful 
and fair," plainly inculcates this notion of a spirit-body, 
made fair or foul b3* the habitual character of our thoughts. 
He says : 

" So every spirit, as it is more pure, 
And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight ; 
For of the soul the body form doth take ; 
For soul is form, and doth the body make." 



270 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 



CHAPTER IX. 

DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. THE FACT ADMITTED BY MEDI- 
CAL SCIENCE. INFERENCES FROM THE PHENOMENON. — ■ 

SPIRIT-ANALOGIES. HARTMANN's THEORY OF THE UN- 
CONSCIOUS. 

The facts already recorded show that the human mind 
is so constituted that it may manifest discrete, or entirely 
separate, states of consciousness. I have illustrated this 
in the cases of Mrs. Mowatt, Miss Reynolds, and others. 
In the case of Mrs. Mowatt, the superior consciousness in- 
cluded the lower ; in that of Miss Reynolds, the con- 
sciousness of each state was entirely distinct from the other. 
Even medical science admits the phenomenon of discrete 
states in catalepsy and other affections ; so the question of 
its realrty has been settled. Indeed the phenomena of our 
daily natural sleep confirm it. 

But as the subject from my standpoint introduces views 
not yet admitted 03- philosophy, in regard to the nature of 
consciousness, a somewhat more extended survey will be 
necessary before I formally draw my inference, which is 
briefly this : — An analogous fact of discrete mental states 
as the} 7 affect communicating spirits, may be fairly postu- 
lated as accounting for many of the shortcomings, contra- 
dictions, and stupidities on the part of supposed spirits, 
which have so notified and baffled investigators. 

That mental phenomena and changes take place in the 
utter absence of consciousness, and that we ma} 1- even think 
without it, seems to be now the doctrine generally taught 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 271 

and accepted. Mr purpose is to show that this doctrine 
must be dismissed as not proven ; that some degree of con- 
sciousness attends all mental operations, even those which 
go on in sleep ; — that there is no such phenomenon as 
"unconscious cerebration," but that all intelligence in- 
volves the exercise of a conscious discrimination, more or 
less active. 

B3 7 the law or maxim of parcimony, we must not multiply 
substances or entities unnecessarily ; and my further con- 
clusion under that rule is, that the theosophic theory of a 
partition of the spirit, under which a geist, or shadow-man, 
independent of the spirit, is left behind to manifest itself 
to mortals, and play many unaccountable antics, is wholly 
superfluous, since the doctrine of discrete states, applied 
to spirits as well as to mortals, is a sufficient explanation. 

Locke's assertion that self is not determined by identity 
or diversity of substance, but only b}^ identity of conscious- 
ness, requires qualification. 

Hartmann, of Berlin, the pessimist, whose "Philosophy 
of the Unconscious " has been more widely circulated than 
any recent philosophical work in Germany, has undertaken 
to treat the subject exhaustively, and he seems to agree 
with Locke ; for he assumes that belief in a double con- 
sciousness in the human subject is equivalent to belief in 
a double personality. As the issue of Hartmann's inductive 
philosophy, based as it is more on physiological facts than 
on metaphysical abstractions, is that the Supreme Power 
in the universe has intelligence and will, but is destitute of 
consciousness, and therefore unworthy of adoration, — it 
will be seen that if it can be proved that consciousness is 
merely the equivalent of active intelligence, all Hartmann's 
excellent scientific arguments, proving the operation of 
mind and purpose throughout all animated nature, fall to 
the service of theism, and his atheism, or pantheism, which- 
ever it may be, is annulled. I defer for the present my 



272 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

notice of what he has to say of Spiritualism, the facts of 
which he admits on testimony. 

The Ego is not a product of memory, but memorj^ is a 
product of the Ego. Those who believe in a double or 
even in a manifold consciousness, need not believe in the 
constant incommunicability of the different states. On the 
contra^, the facts all tend to prove that there is a supreme 
consciousness, even in the human complex, which includes 
and colligates all that is subordinate, thus reducing the 
manifold to unity. 

If unconsciousness is the suspension of all sensation and 
all mental operations, then consciousness must be our men- 
tal activity in any of its modes. Consciousness is not a 
distinct faculty, at one moment active and the next inert ; 
it is the mind active and cognizant of the forms of its ac- 
tivity in some of its multiplex states, whether in sleeping 
or waking. 

We wind up a watch, and the next moment cannot recol- 
lect that we did it. We say we must have wound it up 
automatically. But our forgetfulness of the fact of the 
consciousness is no proof that it did not exist, however 
transiently. In cases of absence of mind like that of the 
German Professor, — who called at his own house one even- 
ing, and on being told that the Professor was not at home, 
walked away, forgetful that he himself was the Professor, — 
self-consciousness is merely diverted from its operation by 
a consciousness directed to other thoughts than that of 
self. 

When we are walking, immersed in thought, two inde- 
pendent consciousnesses may be at work, one regulating 
our bodily motions, the other busy with our thinking. The 
fact that soldiers on a march, or persons walking for a 
wager, have been known to sleep while walking, does not 
affect our inference : a certain consciousness may accom- 
pany their acts even in sleep. 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 278 

A man of ordinary self-control rarely oversleeps himself 
-when it is important that he should wake and rise three or 
four hours earlier than usual. The anxious mother wakes 
at the slightest motion from her suffering child. "What is 
it but consciousness that produces the waking in such 
cases? A person stunned will pick up his hat, walk home, 
undress, and go to bed, though his consciousness may seem 
to be annihilated, and he may have no recollection of what 
he has been doing when he comes to his senses. That there 
was an obscure consciousness regulating his movements is 
the explanation. 

The case is related of a woodman who, while in the midst 
of uttering a sentence, was felled inseusible to the earth by 
a blow on the head from a tailing tree. He remained for 
months in a semi-coma:, s; state, and was at last trepanned 
for the accident. The minute the crushed fragment of bone 
was lifted, he went on finishing the sentence he had begun 
several months before. Compare this with the analogous 
facts 1 have related in the case of Mrs. Mowatt. 

Epileptics have been known to finish, in a new paroxysm 
of their complaint, a sentence begun in an attack which had 
occurred days or weeks before. Combe relates that an 
Edinburgh porter, who while drunk left a package at the 
wrong house, could not when sober summon any rec; 
tion of where he had left it ; but on being drunk again at 
once recalled the place and got back the package 

Facts like t'. v that trains of thought, carried on 

in one state of consciousness, may be interrupted by the 
access of another state, but resumed when the former sus- 
pended state returns. The phenomenon is one which e 1 
experienced student of somnambulism will admit. Indeed, 
as 1 have already stated, medical science admits it as com- 
mon in catalepsy. 

Similar facts could be multiplied indefinitely. Mauds- 
ley, whose authority will be readily accepted by materialists, 
18 



274 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

relates the case of a groom who was kicked on the head by 
his mare Dolly, and made insensible. When, after three 
hours, a portion of bone pressing on the brain was removed, 
the patient cried out with great energy, ' ' Whoa, Dolly ! " 
The words he had just been going to utter had been locked 
up, as they might have been in the phonograph, to be let 
go the moment the obstructing pressure was removed. The 
incident is quoted as a proof that by pressing on the brain 
we can stop a thought or a volition. This may be true ; 
but it does not prove that the mind remains vacant of 
thought, or that every degree of consciousness is suspended. 
One mental state has been superseded by another less 
demonstrative — that is all. 

" Persons have lived for years," says Dr. Wm. Gregory, 
of Edinburgh, "in an alternation of two consciousnesses, in 
the one of which they forget all thej T have ever learned in 
the other." Even Huxley admits the implied fact. In his 
Address, Aug. 25, 1874, before the British Association at 
Belfast, he describes a case in which two separate lives, a 
normal and abnormal one, seemed to be lived at intervals 
by the same individual. 

"The more we examine the mechanism of thought," 
says Dr. O. W. Holmes, " the more we shall see that the 
automatic, unconscious action of the mind enters largely 
into all its processes. . . . We all have a double, who is 
wiser and better than we are, and who puts thoughts into 
our heads and words into our mouths." With a little qual- 
ification this is good spiritual doctrine, since there are un- 
doubtedly spiritual faculties within us transcending those 
of our normal state (as clairvoyance proves) ; but can our 
' ' wiser and better double " be destitute of consciousness ? 
On the contrarj', he is as superior in that respect as in 
others. Do we not regard it as a detraction from the char- 
acter of the Supreme Being to den} T Him the attribute of 
consciousness ? Hartmann gives his God intelligence and 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 275 

will, but represents Him as unconscious ; and it is this 
defect, the philosopher tells us, that makes deity unworthy 
of human adoration. 

The late Professor Clifford, of England, who, had he not 
died young, would probably have outgrown his wild theo- 
ries, hypothecated what he called " mind-stuff" to account 
for life and mind on materialistic and Sadducean principles. 
He entirely overlooked the consideration that when he anni- 
hilated what extreme materialists understand by matter, by 
identifying it, in ever so limited a degree, with mind, he 
surrendered his whole atheistic argument, and became a 
simple idealist. 

Much more rational and consistent is the theory of Dr. 
Heinrich Tiedemann (1877), who argues that the original 
matter, imperceptible to the senses, which constituted the 
entire universe, must have been heterogeneous, and not ho- 
mogeneous, as Herbert Spencer would have it ; and this het- 
erogeneous matter must have been composed of physical, 
psychological, and psychical elements ; so that all which we 
see before us — minerals, plants, animals, and man — had 
their origin in the mutual acting on one another of the 
qualities of this heterogeneous matter. Tiedemann ssljs 
that Materialism, in declaring that matter must be percep- 
tible to the senses, or that things which cannot be recog- 
nized and investigated with the limited sensual organs and 
their adjuncts, have no existence, or are mere transient 
phenomena, has started from false premises, and hence all' 
its inferences therefrom must also be erroneous. He says : 

"All that we perceive has originated from something 
that existed before ; it must have been so at all times and 
everywhere. Atoms, molecules, and monads, therefore, 
are conceptions which must all have originated from some- 
thing that existed previously, as the eternal past is no 
more limited than the eternal future. But with the adop- 
tion of original atoms, molecules, or monads, we should 
limit our deduction into the indefinite past, and the moment 



276 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

we arrive at them, we should be compelled to assume a 
stationary condition of them in the indefinite past, and 
thus everj-thing would have a beginning, and must have 
been created : — by whom, where, how, and of what?" 

Thus it will be seen that Tiedemann leaves room for the 
theistic theor}~, — indeed, finds it inevitable. From a sin- 
cere Materialist he became, through free investigation, a 
sincere Spiritualist. He argues that the atoms, &c, must 
have originated from something before them, since a state 
of rest extending back into the eternal past is an impossi- 
bilitj^ ; such a state of rest would be motionless death, 
which cannot be proved to have existed anywhere, or at 
any time in the universe. If motion had ever commenced, 
that which moves must previously have been without mo- 
tion, which is simply impossible. 

The monistic doctrine, which teaches that only one 
matter, plrysical matter, constituted the universe, is ably 
combated b} T Tiedemann. Nobodj', he sa} T s, will deny that 
physiological essence and matter predominate in plants, 
while in animals and man there is a psychic essence, which 
must necessarily be combined with psychic matter, and 
manifest itself through corresponding phenomena. A 
ps}xhic force, he argues, without a corresponding psychic 
matter, is the phantom of an unsound speculation. Hence, 
in his trinhry of grades of matter, soul-stuff must have a 
place.* Of the materialization phenomena, Tiedemann 
says : 

" It seems as if the higher developed spirits possess the 
facult}' to mould the omnipresent physiological and physi- 
cal elements into such objects as were known to them dur- 
ing their earthly existence, which is generally called mate- 
rialization, though this must be regarded as a misnomer, 
because it admits of the supposition that immaterial ele- 

* Dr. E. D. Babbitt, in his elaborate work entitled "Principles of Light and 
Color" (1878), assumes the existence of the " radiant or ultra- gaseous matter," 
afterwards proved by the experiments of William Crookes. 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 277 

ments are wrought into material forms, a thing which 
occurs nowhere in nature, not even in the spirit- world, 
which cannot extend beyond the limits of infinite nature. 

" In the same manner some spirit-bodies, inhabitants of 
the universe, have the power to use the surrounding elements, 
which they seem partly to borrow from a medium, for the 
purpose of appearing in such a condition that they become 
visible, and even tangible, to certain favorably organized 
persons ; — adopting once more the corporeal form in which 
they were known to men, and in which alone they can be 
recognized as the beings they pretend to be." * 

Since all mental activity, all thought, implies conscious- 
ness in some form or degree, the fact that we may not be 
conscious at one time of having been conscious at a pre- 
vious time, is no proof whatever that consciousness was 
not then present. To know and to be conscious of know- 
ing are one and the same thing. The whole of conscious- 
ness is not included in a special act of attention or discrim- 
ination. I may be conscious of knowing that the whole is 
greater than a part, even when I am not attending to the 
fact. Indeed, this sub-consciousness must influence many 
of my acts. The thought that flashes to a conclusion, or 
solves a problem without apparent effort, may have been 
nothing less than the product of the conscious mind in one 
of its discrete states. 

Mind may work in one state with a velocity wholly in- 
conceivable to mind in a lower state. The mental phe- 
nomena of drowning confirm this. See the letter addressed 
by Admiral Beaufort to Dr. W. H. Wollaston, originally 
published in the Life of Sir John Barrow, who remarks of 
the letter : 

" It proves that the spirit of man may retain its full 
activity when freed from the trammels of the flesh ; at least 
when all the functions of the bod3 T are deprived of animal 



* See " Four Essays concerning Spiritism." By Heinrich Tiedemann, M. D., 
Philadelphia. Chicago : fteligio-Philosophical Publishing House. 



278 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

power, and the spirit has become something like the type 
and shadow of that which we are taught to believe con- 
cerning the immortalit}' of the soul." 

Admiral Beaufort, when a } T outh, fell overboard from a 
boat, and not being able to swim, sank before relief could 
be had, but was in the water less than two minutes. He 
sa} T s : 

''Though the senses were thus deadened, not so the 
mind ; its activity seemed to be invigorated in a ratio 
which defies all description, for thought rose after thought 
with a rapidity of succession that is not only indescribable 
but probably inconceivable by any one who has not himself 
been in a similar situation. . . . Travelling backwards, 
every past incident of nry life seemed to glance across my 
recollection in retrograde succession ; not, however, in 
mere outline, as here stated, but the picture filled up with 
every minute and collateral feature. Indeed, many trifling 
events which had been long forgotten then crowded into 
nry imagination, and with the character of recent famil- 
iarity. . . . The innumerable ideas which flashed into 
my mind were all retrospective. . . . Not a single thought 
wandered into the future." 

The mind is not only a unity, but a multiplex unity, and 
one that in its historical evolution is ever growing more 
multiplex. It has capabilities beyond all that can be 
imagined as coming from the mere exercise of the known 
senses. Its supersensual powers and achievements have 
been amply demonstrated in the facts of Spiritualism. 

Mr. G. H. Lewes tells us that thinking, being a seria- 
tion, and involving time, the notion of ultimate unity and 
simplicit}^ cannot be applied to a Thinking Principle. But 
this assertion has no scientific value in view of certain 
well-known mental phenomena. In drowning and the near 
prospect of death, the mind, we have seen, may act with mi- 
raculous celerity. Time is annihilated , and seriation is super- 
seded. Indeed, clairvoyance proves this ; and it is spiritual- 
ly and objectively proved in the seeming supersedure of all 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 279 

time in the instantaneous production of long messages, 
written independently of any human agency. The events 
of a life- time ma3 r be presented to consciousness in a flash. 
I can only compare the effect to that photographic process 
by which all the minute details of a large picture may be 
compressed into a mere dot, and made visible only through 
the microscope. 

The frequent absurdity of our thoughts in dreams is no 
proof of unconsciousness. It merely shows that while the 
reasoning faculty is inert, consciousness ma} T accept the 
fanciful or superinduced for the real. Nor is the profound 
sleep from which we bring no recollection when we wake 
any proof of mental insensibility. When our sleep is 
deepest, the mind may be most active. Abercrombie 
relates that in the case of persons talking in their sleep, 
and thus indicating the subject of their dreams, it con- 
stantly happens that, when interrogated as to their dreams 
the next morning, they deny having had any ; and even if 
the subject of their sleep-talking be suggested to them, it 
awaken s no train of memory. If consciousness, then, be 
mental activity, how are we to prove utter unconsciousness ? 
External signs are not to be trusted here for a solution of 
the mystery. The Rev. Mr. Tennant lay in a state of 
apparent insensibility for some thirty hours, but was con- 
scious of what was going on around him, and also of 
certain spiritual experiences which he underwent. 

The facts of idiocy are often quoted by Materialists as 
helping their theory. But the most advanced science on 
the subject gives them no comfort. Dr. Bateman, con- 
sulting physician to the Eastern Counties Asylum for Idiots, 
England, gives it as his experience that the results of idiot 
training furnish a forcible demonstration of the dualistic 
theory of matter and mind. Thought is not a mere func- 
tion of brain protoplasm. The varied phenomena of na- 
ture are something more than mere molecular changes of 



280 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

matter. This is proved in the facts adduced by Hartmann. 
Volition and consciousness spring from somethiug be3 r ond 
nerve-centres and purely plrysical motions. The intellectual 
and moral faculties are not absent from the idiot. There is 
an independent spiritual consciousness which reveals itself 
by flashes at times. A celebrated German authority, Herr 
S eager, of Berlin, has stated that in his establishment he 
had indubitable cases of idiocy, in which the head was 
small and malformed, yet in which the results of education 
were so triumphant that his patients were ultimately able 
to mix with the world without being recognized as idiots. 
Further, he tells us that in one instance a young man un- 
derwent confirmation, without the priest's suspecting that 
he had been rescued from idiocy. Dr. Bateman says : 

"Undoubtedly the idiot of the lowest class has the germ 
of intellectual activity and of moral responsibility ; and 
this germ, cherished and nourished by the genial warmth 
of human kindness, fenced round and protected from the 
blasts and buffetings of the world by the cords of true 
philanthropy, watered by the dew of human sympathy, 
although possibly only permitted to bud here, is destined 
hereafter to expand into a perfect flower, and flourish pe- 
rennially in another and a better state of being." 

Agassiz, reaffirming the views of Dr. Brown-Sequard, 
sa3 T s : "There are two sets, or a double set of mental 
powers in the human organism, essentially different from 
each other. The one may be designated as our ordinary 
conscious intelligence, the other as a superior power, which 
controls our better nature ; . . . acting through us without 
conscious action of our own." Here the " superior power" 
to which Agassiz refers may be simply a discrete mental 
state, or a high spiritual consciousness. In the Supple- 
ment to Chauncey Hare Townshend's ' ' Facts in Mesmer- 
ism" (London, 1844) will be found a letter from Agassiz, 
giving an account of the manner in which he himself was 
affected by mesmerism at Neufchatel, February 22, 1839. 



'man a complex being. 281 

J. Balfour Brown, in his " MedicalJurisprudence," says : 
" In cases of pure somnambulism the waking consciousness 
of the individual knows nothing of the sleeping conscious- 
ness. It is as if there were two memories." This is true ; 
only it should have been added that the " sleeping" may 
include the waking consciousness. 

Abercrombie relates the case of a boy who was trepanned 
for a fracture of the skull at the age of four. He was 
at the time in complete stupor, and after his recovery re- 
tained no recollection of the operation. At the age of 
fifteen, during the delirium of a fever, he gave a correct 
description of the operation and of the persons that were 
present at it, with their dress and other minute particulars. 
He had never been heard to allude to it before, and no 
means were known by which he could have become ac- 
quainted with the circumstances he mentioned. 

Only the theory of a discrete mental state is applicable 
here. Is it likely that a boy four years old, while in a state 
of stupor, took cognizance of things and persons about 
him, and kept it all in his memoiy, unless there had been 
a psychical consciousness at work? May not Swedenborg 
throw some light on the question ? He says : 

" Whatever things a man hears, sees, and is affected 
with, these are insinuated, as to ideas and ends, into his 
interior memory, without his being aware of it, and in that 
they remain, so that not anything perishes ; although the 
same things are obliterated in the exterior memory. The 
interior memory, therefore, is such, that there are inscribed 
in it all the particular things, 3~ea, the most particular, 
which man has at any time thought, spoken, and clone, yea, 
which have appeared to him as a shadow, with the most 
minute circumstances, from Ms earliest infancy to extreme 
old age." 

Inconceivable as this may appear, it is in harmony with 
innumerable facts. " Our intuitions," says J. Le Conte, 
" are in the nature of spiritual senses, by which we attain 



282 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

knowledge directly by processes which transcend the power 
of our analysis." Swedenborg says : 

u Every man has an inferior or .exterior mind, and a mind 
superior or interior. . . . These two minds are so distinct, 
that man so long as he lives in the world does not know 
what is performing with himself in his superior mind, and 
when he becomes a spirit, which is immediately after death, 
he does not know what is performing in his inferior mind." 

Maudsley tells us that ' ' consciousness is not coextensive 
with mind;" that "a mental power is being organized 
before the supervention of consciousness ; " and that " the 
preconscious action of the mind, and the unconscious, are 
facts of which self-consciousness can give no account." 
But how do we know that consciousness is not " coextensive 
with mind " ? How can we know it, since facts prove that 
we may be wholly ignorant, in our normal state, of our 
higher or lower developments of consciousness ? 

To those mental operations of which our ordinary con- 
sciousness takes no note, Carpenter has given the not felic- 
itous name of " unconscious cerebration." Other phrases 
used to designate the phenomenon are, " obscure percep- 
tions," " reflex action of the brain," and "automatic brain- 
work." But we cannot think without knowing it, since 
thought without a knowledge of it is merely potential 
thought. ' ' Take away consciousness from an intellectual 
act," says Paul Janet, " and what will remain but an empty 
dead concept?" 

But in cases of insanity, or where a sensitive is biologized, 
and seems to be subject to the will of the mesmerizer, is 
there not an absence of consciousness ? Na}^, it is to iden- 
tify consciousness with reason to instance such cases as any 
proof of the utter absence of the former. 

The legitimate inference, then, from our facts is, that 
there is a psychical or inner consciousness distinct from 
the cerebral and outer, and that between the two there are 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 283 

discrete degrees. Sometimes there ma}^ be an intromission 
of thought from one to the other ; and in highly sensitive 
subjects this is not uncommon. Thoughts that come to us, 
we know not how or whence, may come from higher grades 
of consciousness ; sometimes, perhaps, from lower ; for 
the essence of feeling, as well as of thought, is conscious- 
ness. 

The "intuitive cognition" of Jacobi, the "intellectual 
intuition" of Schelling, the "secret power" of Agassiz 
and Dr. Brown-Sequard, the "ecstasy" of Plotinus, and 
the " unconscious cerebration" of Dr. Carpenter, do not 
suggest the whole truth ; for the thought generated in the 
state thus variously designated is not the product of mental 
passivity, but the equivalent of an inner and at times a 
superior consciousness. 

Schelling's assertion that there is a capacity of knowl- 
edge above or behind consciousness, and higher than the 
understanding, is merely another form of saying that there 
is a distinct spiritual consciousness ; and this I hold to be 
the truth. Fully consistent with it is the theory that there 
are spirits who, as Shakspeare says, "tend on mortal 
thoughts," and perhaps impart much that we regard as 
purely our own. In our highest, deepest, most intimate 
consciousness we must be aware of our spiritual existence 
and environments. Since all ultimate and absolutely sim- 
ple facts are facts of consciousness, the logical basis of all 
our knowledge must be consciousness, and without it there 
can be no thinking. 

The German word for consciousness (Bewusstsein, con- 
scious-being) would seem to involve in its meaning the 
identity of knowing and being, and to comprehend the 
great fact of discrete mental states. 

Lessing, an earnest, independent thinker, has this re- 
mark : "It belongs to human prejudices that we regard 
thought as the first and chief thing, and wish to derive 



284 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. . 

everything from it ; whereas, in fact, everything, ideas in- 
cluded, depends upon higher principles." All which ma} T be 
reduced to this : There may be a divine ground of thought 
and consciousness, to which thought, as manifested by 
man, is an inferior force. This can be readily admitted, 
since in reply to the assertion, "There is nothing greater 
than thought,-' it rnay be replied, " Except the mind it- 
self." Our interior psychical faculties, involving as they do 
clairvoyance, must transcend those of the external, specu- 
lative intellect. 

The fact of those inner states, in the which our inner 
man is and thinks, before our normal consciousness per- 
ceives itself as existing and thinking in them, is clearly 
conceded by I. G-. Fichte and by Schelling. But they do 
not seem to take it into the account that those inner states 
instead of being passive, may be also states of conscious- 
ness. Thus in the case of "intuitions," or results of 
"unconscious cerebration," our consciousness, according 
to these philosophers, perceives a defect within itself, a 
negation of its individual self-activity. But this negation 
is founded on illusion, and loses its force when we admit 
the great fact of discrete degrees. 

Dr. Carpenter says : " Mental changes, of whose results 
we subsequently become conscious, may go on below the 
plane of consciousness, either during profound sleep, or 
whilst attention is wholly engrossed by some entirely differ- 
ent train of thought." This is a fair statement of the 
view now generally taken. But consciousness is not a 
" plane," a simple surface. It has its elevations and its 
depressions, its sunlight and its shade, in short, its discrete 
states. From one point its horizon is expanded ; from 
another it is contracted. If there are mental changes in 
sleep, then there is consciousness in that sleep, though we 
may not know it when we wake. If, while our attention 
is engrossed b} T a certain train of thought, other thoughts 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 285 

are going on, they too may pertain to consciousness, whose 
very essence is thought. Can two consciousnesses coexist? 
"Wiry not? That we are not conscious of a consciousness 
is no proof that it may not have existed and been active. 

All degrees of consciousness may, like the three funda- 
mental colors, red, yellow, and blue, be dissolved into a 
unity of white light ; and so there may be — and my own 
experience in somnambulism affirms it — a supreme con- 
sciousness, in which all others may be blended. 

May not these analogies of discrete states of the mind 
apply to spirits in their attempt to manifest themselves to 
mortals ? In this attempt the spirit may not be in the ex- 
ercise of his high spiritual consciousness, any more than in 
his materialized manifestation he is exhibiting his real. 
spirit-form. In the last-named act his object is to extem- 
porize a form in order to make himself recognized ; and 
this form he tries to make like that which he had at some 
period of his earth-life. The experiment, accordingly, may 
involve a descent from a higher to a lower condition, one 
limited and obscured, and it is consequently a changed and 
partial consciousness which he brings. Thus his accounts 
of life in the spirit-world ma} T be confused or contradictor}^ ; 
and his predictions and replies, though sometimes accurate, 
ma} T be often fallacious. He may be powerless to say or do 
what in an ampler state of consciousness he might desire. 
We must not take it for granted that a spirit submitting to 
material conditions can manifest the same consciousness 
which he ma}' have in a superior state. 

The reticence, the mistakes, the lapses of memory, and 
the frivolous excuses or postponements, to which these 
manifesting spirits at times resort, and which occur even in 
the case of well-identified "materializations," ma}^ be ex- 
plained by this theory of a change or limitation of con- 
sciousness. It is in harmony with the mental phenomena 
shown in the facts of this chapter. , The materialized 



286 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

spirit-form does not adequately embod}^ the consciousness 
of the spirit ; since that form is as foreign to it as the mol- 
ecules making up the body of the child are foreign to the 
same being when an adult. 

That which physicists and philosophers have regarded as 
"unconscious operations of the mind," must, then, be re- 
ferred simply to a discrete mental state. The fundamental 
truth lies in the words of Job : " There is a spirit in man, 
and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them under- 
standing." 

Mark the force here of the relative them. It is to man 
and the spirit of man that the Almighty giveth under- 
standing. Why this distinction? Is it not a distinction 
between the cerebral or normal consciousness, and that 
which is the property of the inner spiritual nature? If 
there are two " understandings," may there not be a dual 



consciousness 



Edward von Hartmann, author of "The Philosophy of 
the Unconscious," was ill at the time of the Berlin experi- 
ments with Slacle, and could not witness them ; but he 
accepts Zollner's account of their occurrence, and attempts 
to reconcile the phenomena with his Sadclucean philosophy, 
which may be summed up thus : There is no future for 
man, and the cosmos had better not have been. 

Nominally Hartmann is atheistic ; but as he argues in 
favor of an Intelligence and a Will, proved in the processes 
of nature, his system is not wholly antagonistic to Theism. 
He concludes that there is omnipresent in nature one Will 
and Intellect, acting unconsciously, in inseparable union 
with each other, through whose agencj^ all the phenomena 
of the universe, including those of Spiritualism, may be 
accounted for. 

He tells us that consciousness is not a fixed state, but a 
process, a perpetual becoming ; that its antecedents are 
impenetrable to itself, and we can only hope to resolve 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 287 

the problem indirectly. This he attempts to do. He first 
distinguishes consciousness from self-consciousness, re- 
garding the former as the prior of the two. Will and 
Intellect he regards as belonging to the domain of the Un- 
conscious ; a power operating on all unconscious functions, 
human, animal, and vegetable. It is the one absolute 
Subject. In other words, it is a union of Intellect and 
Will, which we may call God if we choose, but which to 
Hartmann has none of the qualities that command ado- 
ration.* 

This unconscious Power, immanent in the universe, has 
its phenomenal manifestation in a multitude of individuals ; 
and consciousness first emerges from the cerebral organism 
of man ; all belief in whose immortality, however, is a 
delusion. For this attempt to evolve consciousness from 
organism, Hartmann does not claim originality. Long ago 
Schelling remarked, It is not thought itself, but the con- 
sciousness of it, which depends on organic modifications. 
Thus by cerebral consciousness Hartmann means our nor- 
mal state ; since any other consciousness of which we may 
have experience is, in his system, merely a development 
of the imparted activity of the Unconscious, and does not 
fairly belong to the human individual. 

The essence of consciousness, he tells us — and here let 
the reader prepare to enter on very obscure ground — con- 
sists in the rupture of the companionship between Will and 
Intellect. This divorce is effected b}< forcing upon the mind 
a novel perception, which is not a purpose of its own voli- 
tion, and therefore exists in opposition to the will. He 
celebrates the birth of consciousness in these words : 

" The grand revolution is now consummated ; the first 
step is taken towards the world's enfranchisement. The 
Idea is emancipated from the Will ; hereafter it will be 

* See Professor Francis Bowen's excellent " Modern Philosophy " for a lull 
and fair account of Hartmann and his system. 



288 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

able, as an independent Power, to oppose itself to the Will, 
and to subject it to its own laws, after having been hitherto 
its slave. The astonishment of the Will at this revolt 
against its authority, which up to this time has been recog- 
nized ; the sensation caused b} T the apparition of the Idea 
in the bosom of the Unconscious — that is consciousness." 

Few readers, it is probable, will experience much of a 
clearing-up in their notions on the subject from this epito- 
mized statement ; which, however, is quite as intelligible 
as the ampler details. Hartmann adopts the inductive 
method of the physical sciences, and professes to found his 
theories on observed facts ; and where he has mastered the 
facts of a subject his speculations are often sagacious. 
But in his remarks on somnambulism, the bearings of 
which on consciousness are all-important, he shows that his 
experience has been limited and his knowledge partial. 
Hence he overlooks the real significance of the phenomena. 
The tendency of the facts I have presented is to show that 
consciousness is the necessary accompaniment of all intel- 
ligence, divine as well as human. 

How of that intelligence which, under the Spiritual 
theoiy, is imparted (we being unconscious of the influence) 
by spirits? ^ ; Every grand thought," saj^s Goethe, " which 
bears fruit and has a sequel, is no man's property, but has 
a spiritual origin. The higher a man stands the more is he 
standing under the influence of the demons (spirits). 
Eve^thing is influence, so far as we are not it ourselves. 
In' poetrj- there is decidedly something demoniac, and par- 
ticularly in the unconscious, in which intellect and reason 
all fall short, and which therefore acts beyond all con- 
ception." 

Here Goethe, corroborating Plato, is undoubtedly right 
in what he says of spirit influence. But when he gives us 
to suppose that the influence is unconsciously received, he 
omits an important qualification : he should have said, 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING, 289 

unconsciously to our normal and subordinate apprehension. 
The thought must fall on utterly barren soil if there is no 
conscious receptivity, however occult, for its germination. 

It is only by a resort to highly metaphysical subtleties 
that Hartmann can make a show of defending his thesis. 
The weak point in his system has been ably exposed by 
Kirchmann, who says : 

" Hartmann' s idea of the unconscious includes all the 
characteristics which impart to human knowledge the qual- 
ity conscious. The form of conscious knowledge depends 
on the following conditions: (1) Its contents are given 
under the form of knowledge ; (2) this knowledge knows 
this form, or, in other words, the knowledge, besides its 
contents, knows itself as knowledge (is self-conscious) ; 
(3) the knowledge can reassemble the numerous elements, 
one after the other, and co-ordinate them according to their 
relations ; (4) the knowledge, in spite of the rich diversity 
of its contents, and the successive appearance of its ideas, 
as separated in time, seizes on the idea of itself as a unity. 
Of these determinations, proper to the form of knowledge, 
the Unconscious Thought possesses incontestably the first, 
the second, and even the fourth, according to Hartmann's 
own showing. The Unconscious Thought, in effect, pos- 
sesses reason, and manifests it moreover, because it joins 
particular ideas, one to the other, by the tie of means to 
end ; and here comes in the third attribute, while the fourth 
results sufficiently from the universal unity accorded to the 
Unconscious." 

To these affirmations Hartmann replies that "the Un- 
conscious Thought does not recognize a separation between 
the form and the contents of the knowledge, the subject 
and the object, in the act of thinking ; that it is just here 
that the subject and the object are intimately identical, or 
rather that nothing distinguishes them absolutely, since 
they are not yet risen out of their state of original indif- 
ference." 

This mere theory that the knower does not know that he- 
knows, is fairly offset, if not annulled, by the counter 
19 



290 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

theory that knowledge is not knowledge without a con- 
sciousness of it. The whole drift of my facts has been to 
show that Mind active is the equivalent of consciousness. 

Clairvoyance is sometimes manifested in a state of ordi- 
nary consciousness. Schopenhauer testifies to this in his 
own case. Zschokke does the same. I have frequently 
known Charles H. Foster, the medium, while normally 
conscious, read what was written on a tightly folded pellet. 

According to Hartmann, clairvoyance is merely " a finite 
Manifestation of the infinite prevision of the Unconscious, 
in which the seer and the seen are identical." Let us see 
what this theory, involves in the case of the conscious clair- 
voyant. The Unconscious Infinite discerns what is wanted 
hj the Conscious Finite, answers the want, prompts him 
to detect among a dozen folded pellets the right one, and 
to read what is written on it, — and does all this blindly 
and without a purpose. Only by robbing intelligence of all 
its human analogies, and making it something distinct from 
any human experience, can such a theory be maintained. 
Is there any conceivable reason why the -intelligence cred- 
ited to the Unconscious is not as distinctly conscious as 
any human act of discernment, discrimination, and com- 
munication can be ? 

Hartmann is a monist — that is, a believer in the One- 
ness of all things. Haeckel, also a monist, ridicules the 
manifestations through Slade, and sneers at Hartmann for 
believing in Zollner's experiments confirming the fact of 
independent writing and other phenomena. It is from his 
a priori assumptions that Haeckel passes judgment on 
those facts of experience which he presumes to deny : and 
yet he would have the world think that he is faithful to the 
experimental method. It would seem that when his theory 
is interfered with, a great phj'sicist may fall back on his 
4 'intuitions" as confidently as any seer. 

Admitting the facts of Spiritualism, Hartmann does not 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 291 

abandon the hope of making them fit into his Sadducean 
and pessimistic sj'stem. His objections to the spiritual 
theory are expressed in a letter to my friend, Dr. G. 
Bloede, of Brooklyn, N. Y., one of the most intelligent 
investigators of the supersensual phenomena. Hartmann 
writes : 

(1) " If the spirits are unable to act without a living 
medium — if they have need of its unconscious will for 
their mediation — we may as well content ourselves with 
this unconscious will as a cause." 

(2) "If we have to presume the spirits to be deceased 
persons, we would acknowledge thereby that men possess 
faculties of which they are unconscious as long as they 
live." 

(3) "If this be so, then living men, too, could use those 
faculties unconsciously." 

(4) " The contents of the communications often, in- 
deed, surpassthe intelligence of the media, but never that 
of the persons present (sitters), and are, in the average, 
proportioned to the latter." 

Let us take up Hartmann's objections in their order. 
(1) He assumes that spirits are unable to act without a 
living medium. But this is far from being an admitted 
fact. The phenomena of haunted houses, the apparitions 
seen by persons not medially gifted, and when no medium 
is present, the stone-throwing occurrences, the instances 
on record in which coffins have been displaced without me- 
dial aid, all show that there may be independent spirit 
action. 

It is not true that the spirit alwa}'s operates through the 
"unconscious will" of the medium, and here the pith of 
Hartmann's objection is taken away. I have alread}' men- 
tioned the instances in which clairvoyance has been prac- 
tised by Foster and others while normally conscious. In 
the case of Mrs. Andrews, of Moravia, N. Y., through 
whom remarkable materializations have taken place, the 



292 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

medium is unentranced and wholly conscious. The will 
may be passive ; it is not unconscious. And from facts 
already given it has been seen that even where the medium 
is apparently unconscious (so far as we can judge by our 
external senses) , he may at the same time be in the exercise 
of a superior consciousness. Thus the facts show that 
Hartmann's objection that the spirits require " the medi- 
um's unconscious will" is founded in ignorance on his part. 

In regard to the materialization phenomena, the theory 
that man can act as a spirit, produce any number of form- 
manifestations, and other phenomena, while he is } T et teth- 
ered to the earth -body, surely justifies the theory that he 
may do as much, and more, when wholly detached from 
that body.- He may then command those higher grades of 
matter, of the phenomena, — proving one of which, the fourth 
state, or " radiant matter," — Wm.Crookes remarks : wi These 
phenomena differ so greatly from those presented by gas 
in its ordinary tension, that we are in the presence of a 
fourth condition of matter, which is as far removed from 
the gaseous condition as gas is from the liquid condition." 
That there is an increase of energy as matter becomes more 
sublimated and refined, is also clearly proved by Crookes's 
experiments. 

(2) The supposition that there are spirits of deceased 
persons, Hartmann tells us, involves the acknowledgment 
that men possess faculties of which they are unconscious 
as long as the} 7 live. And this is just the great fact that I 
have been contending for — that men do indeed possess 
such faculties. Hartmann's objection, which he would pre- 
sent as a dilemma, is therefore accepted as a confirmation, 
when coupled with the supplementary fact of discrete mental 
states, of the spiritual theory. How are we to account for 
the phenomena in the case of Laura Bridgman, whose only 
medium of communication with the world of intelligence 
was by the sense of touch, except on the theory of the 



MAN A COMPLEX BEING. 293 

existence of spiritual senses, which, while the physical were 
shut up, made possible the mental development to which 
she attained? 

(3) "But," objects Hartmann, " if this be so," (i.e. 
if men have spiritual faculties,) " then living men, too, 
could use those faculties unconsciously." And, as I have 
alreadj' claimed, it is consistent with the spiritual theory 
that certain high spiritual faculties, like prevision and divi- 
nation, should be sometimes exercised by man in the flesh, 
and he have no consciousness of it in his normal state. I 
have shown that in sleep, in the act of drowning, and 
sometimes irrespectively of any abnormal conditions, facul- 
ties may be developed, of which we have no consciousness 
in our normal state. That this was the belief of some of 
the ancient sages, from Pj^thagoras to Plutarch, I have also 
shown. 

Schelling distinguishes the "nature-element" of the 
Deity from his higher conscious intelligence ; and there 
may be a great truth in this, if man is truly made in the 
divine image. If philosophical science can come so near 
to the borders of Theism as to admit a Divine Intelligence 
and Will, it is but taking one step more, and a very short 
one, into an ampler and higher generalization, to admit a 
Divine consciousness. 

(4) Hartmann's fourth and last objection is an additional 
proof of his lack of acquaintance with the phenomenon. 
I have shown that the entranced medium's discourse may 
be often proportioned to his own intelligence and that of 
the persons present. But there are instances without num- 
ber where the intelligence medially manifested is superior 
to that of the medium and of all, the sitters, and can be 
accounted for only as coming, mediately or immediately, 
from an independent spirit. 

Dr. Bloede, who shows the insufficiency of this fourth 
objection to support the conclusions which Hartmann would 



294 DISCRETE MENTAL STATES. 

base upon it, remarks: "The trouble with these German 
philosophers, who, though claiming the privilege of calling 
their researches preeminently 4 scientific,' are constantly 
constructing the world from the depths of their metaplrysical 
vagaries, is their almost total ignorance of the overwhelm- 
ing mass of spiritualistic facts, and their aversion to observ- 
ing such when an occasion is offered them." 

Hartmann contends that consciousness does not belong 
to the essence, but only to the phenomenal form, or mani- 
festation, of individual being. On the contrary, our spirit- 
ual facts impress it upon us that mind, conscious of an ob- 
ject, is the very essence of being. Extinguish conscious- 
ness of every kind, finite and infinite, and the universe be- 
comes meaningless and objectless. There can be no knowl- 
edge without a knower ; and, in order to know, we must be 
conscious of knowing. The very phrase unconscious Jenoivl- 
edge is logically indefensible. 

The phenomena classed under the generalization of " con- 
sciousness " have baffled the penetration of the profoundest 
thinkers. The subject is still in dispute between the mate- 
rialistic philosophers and those who believe in a psj^chical 
element in man. Spiritualism, in its proofs of a spiritual 
organism, and of discrete mental states, throws a light on 
the question which must bring the philosophy of the future 
into accord with the unquestionable facts. 



FACTS MUST RULE. 295 



CHAPTER X. 

MORE ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS. — SUPERSENSUAL PROOFS. 

MESSRS. MERCER AND SWING ON SPIRITUALISM. KANT'S 

REMARKABLE PREDICTION. SHELLEY INTUITIVELY A SPIR- 
ITUALIST. THE COMTIAN OBJECTIONS. 

Undiscriminating opponents have tried to make Spirit- 
ualism responsible for much more than belongs to it. Kightly 
defined, it is simply belief in the spiritual nature and con- 
tinuous life of man, and in the power of freed spirits to 
communicate in some way, subjectively or objectively, with 
individuals still in the earth -life. 

The attempt to identif}^ Spiritualism proper with any other 
doctrines, collateral and independent, whether they come 
from freed spirits or from mortal seers, is the source of 
much misapprehension and injustice. The various opinions 
which so-called Spiritualists may hold upon subjects reli- 
gious, moral, social, or political, will therefore be dismissed 
by the candid philosopher as foreign to the one question — 
Has Spiritualism an actual basis of facts ? } 

As the same sun which ripens fruit may quicken corrup- 
tion, so Spiritualism may have a good or bad effect, accord- 
ing to the state of the recipient. To charge upon it the 
demerits of its professors is as gross an injustice as it 
would be to charge moral delinquencies upon the moral 
law* ' The arts of printing, of photograph}^ of distillation, 
may all be used to subserve foul purposes as well as good. 
The art of writing makes possible the crime of forger}'. 
Obvious as these considerations are, the}^ are repeatedly 



296 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

overlooked by our assailants. Spiritualism does not make 
characters, it finds thern made. To the good it is an aid, 
like all divine truth, to further good. By the bad its very 
good ma}' be made the means of evil. The tendency to 
criminate Spiritualism itself because the unwise or the un- 
principled may adopt it, or because the unthinking may 
misconstrue it, or the incautious be misled by it, is as con- 
trary to reason as it would be to decry religion because 
intemperate Christian preachers ma}' seem to have driven 
sensitive minds to insanity. 

The clergy, one would think, would welcome our facts as 
giving the most cogent objective proofs of the continuity 
of our individuality, unimpaired beyond the tomb. But 
some of them have raised objections which a little more 
reflection would have checked. The Rev. David Swing, of 
Chicago, says, " In modern Spiritualism the mind falls into 
a trance, and is eloquent without labor, wise without study, 
clairvoyant without eyes, artistic without study or taste ; " 
mediums become " geographers without travels, readers of 
the strata of the earth without sinking a shaft." Hence, 
he argues, Spiritualism is u a new effort to leap over the 
great mediatorial laws " by which individual effort, skill, 
and labor "must be used for the accomplishment of an 
object." 

It would be a sufficient reply to this to say : The facts 
persist, notwithstanding your disapproval of them. In- 
stead of taking the trouble to verify them experimentally, 
the critic sits in his closet and evolves his objections from 
his own a priori speculations. So Melancthon and other 
great men, instead of qualifying themselves by study to 
pass an opinion on the Copernican system, raised futile ob- 
jections out of their limited knowledge. 

The boy Bidder being asked how he did certain won- 
derful computations, replied, "I don't do it, I see it." 
When the son of Bishop Lee, at a distance of some three 



PACTS MUST RULE. 297 

hundred miles, was waked by the shock of his father's fall, 
was he not ' w a geographer without travelling " ? When 
Captain Yount, as the Rev. Horace Bushnell narrates, saw 
in a dream a company of emigrants in the Carson-valley 
Pass, a hundred and fifty miles off, perishing in the snow, 
and in his simplicity, all on the faith of a dream, sent a 
party of men to their relief, and thus saved many lives, — 
was not he too " a geographer without travelling" ? 

When, as Richelieu relates, the prevost of the city of 
Pithiviers, in France, while playing cards in his house, sud- 
denly hesitated, fell into deep musing, and then, turning to 
those present, solemnly said, "The king has just been 
murdered, " and it proved true that on that same evening, 
at the same hour of 4 p. m., Henry IV. had really been 
assassinated, — was not the French officer " eloquent with- 
out labor, wise without studj T , clairvoyant without eyes"? 

When Foster, Watkins, and other sensitives tell me what 
is written on tightly folded pellets, without once touching 
them, where is the plrysica] organ through the emploj'ment 
of which can be explained the evidence of such a power ? 

Since the objections which Mr. Swing raises are annulled 
by constantly recurring facts, would it not be the better 
plan to investigate the phenomena experimentally before 
wasting time in constructing card-houses of imaginary dis- 
proofs ? 

The rapid production of messages in a handwriting where 
the letters are reversed as they would be in setting script 
t}'pe for printing, and where we have to read them from a 
reflection in a mirror, is a common medial phenomenon — 
the medium in his normal state being wholly unskilled in 
executing such writing. Does not this 'show by analogy 
that he may indeed be ' L artistic without study " ? 

But there is another consideration which Mr. Swing, a 
theologian and a biblical expounder, should not have over- 
looked. When he objects to the fact of abnormal intelli- 



-H 



298 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 



gence through " minds that fall into a trance," how can he 
justify himself in preaching every week from texts involv- 
ing the very phenomenon he would discredit? Read the 
account of Balaam's " falling into a trance, but having his 
e3 T es open," and being constrained to utter things opposed 
to his own wishes. See John's Revelation. Read Acts, 
9th and 10th ; and Paul's account of his entrancement 
(Acts xxii.) ; and again 2d Corinthians xii. 2-4. The 
very theoiy of the Bible's authority rests on the assump- 
tion that it came through the mediation of persons inspired, 
under influence, " eloquent without labor." 

Is Mr. Swing prepared to throw discredit on the biblical 
record, or will he take refuge behind the indolent and un- 
scientific assumption that entrancement was limited to 
" Bible times," and that human beings in our day are never 
subject to a similar influence? When an uneducated j^outh 
displays au inexplicable facility of arithmetical computa- 
tion, like Colburn and Bidder, or an amazing musical pro- 
ncienc} T , like the child Mozart, where do we find the proofs 
of study and labor, as preparatory to the displajr of such 
powers? Mozart said of his musical ideas, " Whence and 
Jwiv they come, I know not, nor can I force them. Those 
ideas that please me I retain in my memory." Here the 
theory of a discrete mental state, where the mind may be 
in communication with some influencing spirit, is not inap- 
plicable. 

My friend, William White, of London, author of the 
most liberal, independent, and interesting Life of Sweden- 
borg yet published, and containing facts given in no other 
biography of the great Swedish seer, remarks : 

" Our affections, thoughts, and dreams are spiritual 
manifestations ; our good thoughts arise from the presence 
of celestial comrades, and our evil thoughts are due to our 
infernal acquaintance. We are, therefore, one and all, 
mediums ; and a disciple of Swedenborg would maintain 



FACTS MUST RULE. 299 

that spiritual manifestations are co-extensive with human 
activity. What is specially new in Spiritualism over Swe- 
denborg, is the action of spirits external to the human 
medium — a possibility of which I incline to think Sweden- 
borg was ignorant." 

In a discourse delivered in Chicago in 1878, the Eev. L. 
P. Mercer, a Swedenborgian, remarks : 

" Is it any wonder that the streams of tendency run to a 
materialism which denies any life hereafter, an epicurean- 
ism which cares nothing about it, and a Spiritualism which 
is only separated one remove from either, without any 
necessary belief in God or inspiration of righteousness ? " 

Trulv, I would have my belief in God voluntary and not 
necessary, except in the sense of that divine constraint of 
universal reason which compels us to admit that the whole 
is greater than a part. Belief in human immortality may, 
as we all know, be entertained independently of an} 7 belief 
in God. That it may be so entertained logically and 
rationally, is a wholly separate question, into the discussion 
of which I do not propose now to enter. 

To the patient thinker an all-embracing theism may seem 
as clear a deduction from the laws of reason and of Spirit- 
ualism, as it can be from the assumption that Swedenborg 
is infallible, and that what he says of God must be ac- 
cepted in every particular. Spiritualism does not say to 
us, ''There is one God, and Spiritualism is his prophet," 
but it points us to facts, by the faithful study of which we 
may arrive at the august conviction of a Supreme Spirit. 

Now what is the theism which Mr. Mercer would com- 
mend to us as his " necessary belief" in God, in place of 
that which all the facts of universal nature, incalculably 
corroborated by our proofs of immortality, offer to the 
reverent and earnest seeker after truth ? The former is a 
theism which would have us believe that in the year 1745, 
in the city of London, as one Emanuel Swedenborg sat in 



300 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

his room in his boarding-house, after dinner, the Lord God, 
in the form and dress of a man, came to him and said, 
" Eat not too much ; " and afterwards added, " I am God 
the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer of this world." 

The construction which Spiritualists put on this extraor- 
clinarj' claim is, that Swedenborg, whom we all reverence 
and regard affectionately as a great and good man, subject 
to medial impressions, was, at the time referred to, either 
under a hallucination, partly produced b} 7 eating too much, 
or was under the influence of some ps3^chologizing spirit, 
who claimed to be the Hebrew Jehovah and the infinite 
God. 

One of the great benefits which the Spiritualism of our 
day is imparting to civilization is the evidence it brings 
that spirits ma} 7 be as fallible as mortals ; that the wisest 
seer may mix error with truth ; that we must try both 
spirit and seer, even though they may preface their utter- 
ances with a " Thus saith the Lord." 

Our stupendous facts are not vouchsafed to save us the 
trouble of doing our own thinking ; they are given to 
widen the sphere of thought and impart the stimulus of 
immortal motives. Those persons who would throw off 
individual responsibility, scrutiny, and labor are alwa} T s 
liable to be misled by the impostures of communicating 
spirits, or the dictations of professing seers and trance 
orators. 

It may be true, as Mr. Mercer says, that there is a Spir- 
itualism only separated one remove from ' ' a materialism 
which denies any life hereafter ; " or that there is a Spirit- 
ualism only one remove from "an epicureanism which 
cares nothing about any life hereafter." 

The intuitive desire for continuous life is largely a matter 
of temperament. I have a friend, a Spiritualist by study . 
and experience, who tells me: "It is a matter of indif- 
ference to me — I have no desire to live again ; but I know 



FACTS MUST RULE. 301 

I shall have to face it." My old acquaintance, Harriet 
Martineau, repudiating as nonsense all belief in a future 
life, said, some time during the last decade of her earth- 
life, "I see no particular reason why Harriet Martineau 
should be continued." My friend and correspondent, Pro- 
fessor Francis W. Newman, of England, not a Spiritualist 
but a devout theist, confesses that the desire for another 
life is in him " very weak." William Humboldt, David A. 
Strauss, and others, have expressed similar sentiments. 
And so, many persons, neither thoughtful nor reverent, 
may believe in Spiritualism, and not realize or care for its 
ineffable significance and its transcendent contents. Such 
apathy or such worldly indifference is no more to be cred- 
ited to Spiritualism than moral blindness is to Christianity. 

Are we likely to be any the less devout believers in God 
than the Swedenborgians, because*, we refuse to accept any 
diagram, whether from seer or saint, from priest or philos- 
opher, of that inscrutable Being, of whom it was said by 
St. Denis, "It is when we acknowledge that we do not 
know God, that we know him best"? 

In proving to us the realit}' of an undying spiritual 
principle in finite man, Spiritualism helps us to rise to the 
sublime realization of a supreme Spiritual Principle, behind 
and beyond all that niay seem partial disorder in the uni- 
verse ; and from the summit of that principle Faith may 
look up through the veiling atmosphere to an Infinite Spirit, 
transcendently conscious, and in that sense personal and 
super-personal, in whom inheres all that there is of order, 
of life, of mind, and beauty, in the cosmos and in the soul 
of man. 

The Rev. Mr. Swing tells his hearers that ours is " a 
more material kind of Spiritualism " than that of Sweden- 
borg, inasmuch as we hold that there is "an actual ex- 
change of language and sentiment between those who once 
lived and those who live now." But this is precisely what 



302 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

Sweclenborg also held. The Queen of Sweden said to him, 
"Is it true you can converse with the dead ? " And his 
reply was, "Yes." "Is it a science that can be commu- 
nicated to others?" she asked. "No." "What is it, 
then?" " A gift of the Lord." And a higher than Swe- 
denborg manifested the same gift. John the Revelator 
declares that he conversed with an angel, who, when John 
fell down to worship before his feet, said to him, " See 
thou do it not ; for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy 
brethren the prophets." In this " exchange of language 
and sentiment," the angel gives us distinctly to understand 
that he is an ex-human being, and that he is exchanging 
"language and sentiment" with an individual still alive in 
the flesh. Other biblical passages could be quoted to show 
that by an angel was meant a spirit-man. 

Will Mr. Swing, with his admirable powers of acute 
analysis, please explain to us how it is that what is ex- 
pressly taught in the New Testament and in the writings 
of Swedenborg, is any less " material" than the same fact 
revealed in the phenomena of Spiritualism ? Does he reject 
the testimonj 7 of John the Re\ r elator as to the appearance 
and conversation of a human spirit or angel ? 

Mr. Swing further tells his hearers that the attempts of 
Spiritualists to rule out spurious phenomena, is an evidence 
that they are not yet perfectly assured that "the voices 
and forms and music might not be all of an earthly nature 
and origin." 

This objection is much as if one should say that the 
passage of laws against counterfeiting is a proof that legis- 
lators disbelieve in genuine money. ; The faith of the 
experienced investigator in the genuine is not affected one 
jot or tittle by encountering frauds, even should these 
come from a medium in good repute. Our admitted phe- 
nomena are placed far beyond all danger from that source. 
Facts like pneumatograplry and clairvoyance do not depend 



PACTS MUST RULE. 803 

on the veracity of a medium, and would not be affected by 
his repudiation of them. 

Mr. Swing says : "God has thus far kept some door 
closed against returning feet. No man has yet thrown 
back the bolts." Then what of the religion mainly founded 
on the tradition that the man Jesus came back from the 
dead? The Bible contradicts Mr. Swing on almost every 
page : does he repudiate all such passages as wholly myth- 
ical? So does not the modern Spiritualist. 

" One may well wish," he says, " that Spiritualism might, 
in its highest form, be true." But why should it not be 
true in all its forms, high and low, if the spirit-world is 
peopled from this, as he teaches? He does not hold that 
sinners will be at once transformed into saints, or fools 
into sages. Why should he not rationally expect that if 
the fools and sinners form the majority here, they may 
form the majority in the vestibule of the spirit-world? 

Spiritualism, like every other great fact of nature, is 
full of what to our short-sightedness is obscure, contra- 
dictor}', baffling, and, to use Mr. Swing's alarming word, 
"undignified." And wiry not? It but introduces us to 
the rudiments of the great volume of creation. 

One grand truth, at least, has modern Spiritualism ex- 
torted from this reticent Nature : the truth, namely, that 
the heart's premonitions, — that the intuitions and pre- 
visions of saints, seers, mediums, and little children, in all 
times, and among all races of men, — were not founded in 
delusion, but that they really presignified the veritable, 
objective fact that our departed ones still live, and move, 
and have their being. 

Kant was as remarkable for his intuitional as for his 
reasoning powers. It was a rare combination. I have 
quoted elsewhere a brief extract from his remarks on the 
probability of a spirit-world. I here give them more at 
length, as quoted by Zollner, and translated by Massey, 



304 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

premising 

does not mean unsubstantial. That he was dissatisfied 

with the Cartesian, "hypothetical" notion of spirit is 
obvious : x 

' ' I confess I am much inclined to assert the existence 
of immaterial beings in this world, and to class my soul 
itself in the category of these beings." 

"We can imagine the possibility of the existence of 
immaterial beings without the fear of being refuted, though, 
at the same time, without the hope of being able to dem- 
onstrate their existence by reason. Such spiritual beings 
would exist in space, and the latter notwithstanding would 
remain penetrable for material beings, because their pres- 
ence would imply an acting power in space, but not a 
filling of it, i. e., a resistance causing solidity." 

"It is, therefore, as good as demonstrated, or it could 
be easily proved if we were to enter into it at some 
length ; or, better still, it will be proved in the future — I do 
not know where and when — that also in this life the human 
soul stands in an indissoluble communion ivith all the imma- 
terial beings of the spiritual world; that it produces effects 
in them, and in exchange receives impressions from them, 
without, however, becoming conscious of them, so long as all 
stands well.' " 

" It would be a blessing if such a S3 T stematic constitution 
of the spiritual world, as conceived by us, had not merely 
to be inferred from the too hypothetical conception of the 
spiritual nature generally, but would be inferred, or at least 
conjectured as probable, from some real and generally ac- 
knoivledged observation.'" 

This is remarkable language, and well worthy of the read- 
er's profound consideration. Kant, among philosophers, 
ranks with Plato, Aristotle, and Leibnitz. He tells us sub- 
stantially — and this was more than a century ago — that the 
fact of a communion of the human soul, even in this life, 
with the beings of the spiritual world, will be proved in the 
future. Is not that future at hand ? Has it not already 
come? Our facts fully verify his prediction. 

He goes further. Dissatisfied with the ' ' too Irypothet- 



FACTS MUST RULE. 305 

ical conception of the spiritual nature generally " (the Car- 
tesian conception was then dominant) , he declares that it 
would be a" blessing" if the fact of the intercommunion 
of the two worlds, which he clearly anticipates, could be 
inferred, or at least conjectured as probable, from " some 
real and generally acknowledged observation " (Kant's 
Works, vol. vii. p. 32). 

That "observation," which the great intellect of Kant 
looked forward to as something so desirable, is just what 
those investigators, who are now bringing the scientific 
method to bear upon Spiritualism, are desirous of prose- 
cuting ; and it is just what so many men of partial science 
are trying to discourage and prevent, since, if Kant's 
anticipation is proved true, — as it has been beyond all 
peradventure to millions, — it scatters the theories of mate- 
rialism to the four winds. 

Was Kant in error in supposing that the verification of 
an intercommunion between this and the spirit-world would 
be a blessing.? Never has he indicated a higher sagacity 
than in putting this interpretation on the momentous desid- 
eratum. The present life will assume a new value and 
interest when men are brought up not merely in the vacil- 
lating and questionable belief, but in the settled, indubita- 
ble conviction, that this life is really but one of the stages 
in an endless career, and that the thoughts we think and 
the deeds we do here will certainly affect our condition and 
the very form and organic expression of our personality 
hereafter. Let men from earry childhood to farthest age 
have this conviction ingrained into their minds, and b}^ the 
laws of heredity coming generations must develop its benefi- 
cent effect. 

What an illustration we have in the case of Shelley, the 

illustrious poet, of the struggle of the intuitional element 

in his nature against inherited conceptions of life and its 

issue ! His father and grandfather were both bigoted athe- 

20 



306 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

ists, rejecting all belief in deity and a future for man. 
Shelley had atheism in his blood, and it broke out before he- 
had ended his collegiate career. And yet in his poetr} 7 and 
in some of his letters he at times throws off the Sadducean 
incubus, and cognizes his immortality as clearly as he ever 
did the sun at noonday. In a letter in the possession of 
Mr. C. W. Frederickson, of the city of New York, ad- 
dressed by Shelley to his father-in-law, Godwin, are these 
words : 

" With how many garlands we can beautify the tomb ! 
. . . Surely if any spot in the world be sacred, it is that 
in which grief ceases, and from which, if the voice within 
our hearts mock us not with an everlasting lie, we spring 
upon the untiring wings of a pangless and seraphic life — 
those whom we love around us — our nature universal in- 
telligence, — our atmosphere, eternal love." * 

At another time, shortly before the storm in the Gulf of 
Lerici in which he lost his life, he said: " Another and a 
more extensive state of being, rather than the complete ex- 
tinction of being, will follow that nrysterious change which 
we call death." His poems are rich in passages in which 
the spiritual assumption flashes out through the folds of his 
inherited unbelief. 

Indeed, poetry loses its quality of poetry the moment it 
becomes Sadducean. George Eliot (Mrs. Lewes-Cross) 
has to disguise her dismal unbelief in a gush of sham en- 
thusiasm when she would pass off as poetry the embodi- 
ment of her conception of our posthumous influence on the 
world as the only real and desirable immortality. So art- 
fully is the poor, thin, little conception disguised and pad- 
ded out with swelling words that the passage is often 
quoted in religious collections as expressing the Christian 
idea of a future state. She sings, or affects to sing, thus : 

* See a pamphlet by Charles Sotheran (New York, 1875), entitled " Shelley on 
the Immortality of the Soul." 






FACTS MUST RULE. 307 

" 0, may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence. . . . 
May I reach 

That purest heaven, . . . 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense ! 
So I shall join the choir invisible, 
Whose music is the gladness of the world! " 

Upon all which Mr. Burchell's sufficient comment would 
have been, " Fudge ! " 

That there are persons even among Spiritualists who are 
temperamentally indifferent to a future life, and to whom 
the idea of utter extinction is not disagreeable, I have al- 
ready shown. The assurances of immortality are based on 
something less fluctuating than the desires of the human 
race. The best men may be subject to moods when it may 
seem to them that they could ' ' lie down like a tired child " 
and welcome an endless sleep. And so that state of mind 
which can regard annihilation as more desirable than con- 
tinuous life, though a morbid and exceptional state, is not 
wholly out of the line of my sympathies. But the normal 
and healthy state is undoubtedly that of a full appreciation 
of life as life ; that sense of the well-conditioned child to 
whom the mere act of living is joy enough. 

An immortality of post mortem influence is (in the esti- 
mation of the English positivist, Frederic Harrison) the 
right, the sufficient, the manly aspiration. Continuation 
of life such as savages and little children imagine — such 
as the vulgar look forward to — such as Socrates and Christ 
believed in — is to this superfine philosopher a scandal and 
an offence, exciting only his disdain and his derision. 

In commending to us his charming substitute for the 
immortality of the vulgar conception, he remarks : " Now 
we"(i. e. the positivists) "make the future hope, in the 



308 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

truest sense, social, inasmuch as our future is simply an 
active existence prolonged by society " 

And when the bereaved mother, mourning for her darling 
child, demurs to this, and asks, " What is to me the good 
of society, if my darlings and I are to be no better than 
clods of the earth after a few short j^ears ? " — the sublime 
Comtian affects to turn the tables on her by replying, in a 
burst of scorn, — " This is the true materialism ! Here is 
the ' plrysical theory ' of another life ! This is the unspirit- 
ual denial of the soul, the binding it down to the clay of 
the body ! " 

After these, his actual words, it will not surprise the 
reader to learn that Mr. Harrison waxes exceeding wroth 
over our facts, which, if true, convert his cheap thunder 
into a theatrical sham ; and so he denounces Spiritualism 
as a "disgusting subject," charges men of science with 
" dabbling " in its " filth," and describes the intelligent in- 
vestigators in London, who satisfied themselves as to the 
genuineness of the phenomena through Slade, as "grovel- 
ling before the trickery of a Yankee conjurer ! " 

There would seem to be something like consternation 
mixed with all this wrath. The air of serious hauteur with 
which Mr. Harrison affects to look down on the sordid aspi- 
rants to immortal life, as if they were haggling for a miser- 
able two-and-sixpence, would be comical did it not suggest 
an eccentric^ prompting an emotion of compassion. 

Mr. Harrison has, as he believes, very exalted notions 
of the soul, but he thinks that immortality, in the vulgar 
sense, would detract from the soul's dignity instead of en- 
hancing it. He rebukes materialism for " exaggerating the 
importance of the physical facts and ignoring that of the 
spiritual ; " but the spiritual, in his new and independent 
vocabulary, simply means our posthumous influence. In 
his estimation, it is much more spiritual to exert influence 
as a dead man than as a living. Since our posthumous in- 



FACTS MUST RULE. 309 

fluence, through our innocent errors of opinion, or our well- 
intended acts, is as likely to be bad as good, the comfort 
supplied in his teachings on this point is not very great to 
the ordinary conception, though he thinks it is " but a pes- 
simistic view of life " which would contradict him. He 
tells us there will be a " providential control over all human 
actions by the great Power of Humanity ! " As, apart from 
his esthetic misgivings, his great objection to the fact of 
immortality is, that he " can attach no meaning to a human 
life to be prolonged without a human frame and a human 
world," — the reply of a Spiritualist would be: There 
is both a frame and a world for man in the continued life 
which he enters upon when he leaves the physical frame 
and this world of the external senses. 

Among the active iconoclasts of the day Mr. Leslie Ste- 
phen, of England, is one of the last to whom Spiritualists 
should address a word of discouragement. In pointing out 
the weak places in current religious beliefs, and showing 
how far short of the needs of the modern scientific mind 
are the common theological teachings in regard to the soul, 
he is unwittingly clearing the way for the advent of a psy- 
chological science which shall accept human immortality, 
not only as a postulate of the reason, but as an inference 
from demonstrable facts. 

He is very far from entertaining any such view of the 
case himself. An appeal to Spiritualism disturbs his philo- 
sophical equanimity, and prompts him, as we have seen it 
does Mr. Harrison, to give way to expressions of anger and 
contempt, not weighty with conviction to judicial truth- 
seekers. He remarks of Spiritualists, that '-' they really 
show how belief in another life may be twisted into a most 
grovelling form of materialism ; " which simply means that 
Mr. Stephen dislikes" what we claim to be, not theories, but 
facts ; facts quite irrespective of the question whether they 
may strike a fastidious person as " grovelling" or exalted. 



310 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

In the next life, as in this, it may depend wholly on the 
character of the individual whether he " grovels" or aspires. 

In a paper in a late number of the Fortnightly Review, 
Mr. Stephen informs us that " the so-called belief in a future 
life — whether in hell or in heaven — has always been in 
reality a dream, and not, strictly speaking, a belief at all." 
Repudiating as he does our facts, he may consistently enter- 
tain this theoiy, and regard it as a clever explanation of 
all religious phenomena, including the martyr's defiance of 
death, and other remarkable incidents in human history, 
significant of an overmastering faith in God and the unseen 
world. 

That every man is the measure of every other man, in re- 
gard to the developments of his interior or abnormal facul- 
ties, is a fallacy into which the shrewdest thinkers not un- 
frequently fall through simple ignorance of certain super- 
sensual, but not supernatural, facts, known in all ages of 
the world to observers under whose experience they have 
occurred. The argument of a class of minds of which Mr. 
Stephen is a type, is : "7 cannot see without the use of my 
eyes ; why should another man be able to do so ? / do not 
fall into trances, and see and hear unutterable things ; how 
can you expect me to believe that one Saul of Tarsus was 
any more favored than I am in this respect ? If Slade or 
Watkins can get independent writing from some unseen, 
intelligent force, by holding out a slate, why should not 1 
be the recipient of a like manifestation ? " 

In saying that the belief of men in a future life ' ' has 
alwa} r s been in reality a dream, and not, strictly speaking, 
a belief at all," Mr. Stephen shows simply that his pre- 
possessions blind him to notorious facts. Pythagoras, 
Hesiod, Pindar, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and 
most of the great thinkers of antiquity, founded their be- 
lief in the immortality of the soul on actual phenomena, 
objective or subjective, as proved by Spiritualism, verified 



FACTS MUST RULE. 311 

by observation and sanctioned by reason. To say that 
these men did not believe, but merely dreamed, is to utter a 
sottise, utterly destitute of truth. 

Melancthon sa} r s : "I have myself seen spirits, and I 
know many trustworthy persons who affirm that they have 
not only seen them, but carried on conversations with 
them." Luther bears testimony equally strong to the ex- 
istence of the departed in spiritual forms ; so do Calvin, 
Eichard Baxter, Knox, Oberlin, and hundreds equal!}- emi- 
nent. Does Mr. Stephen suppose that the thousands of 
sincere men who countenanced the witchcraft persecutions 
had really no " belief" in the existence of spirits, — in the 
certainty of a future life ? Does he suppose that men like 
Glanvil, Henry More, Baxter, and Wesley,, were merely 
pottering over their foolish "dreams" when they asserted 
their solemn convictions, based on a knowledge of phe- 
nomena, that death does not kill a man, but simpty leaves 
him a spirit in a spiritual world ? There must be some- 
thing lacking in the sj-mpathetic capacities of one who can 
set down such men as either hypocrites or dupes. 

Mr. Stephen offers this explanation for the belief in irn- 
mortalit}' among uncivilized tribes : 

' ' The infantile intelligence is tolerant of contradictions ; 
it is not surprised on discovering that a body ivhich was 
covered with earth and burned with fire is again appearing 
in its former state; and the fact that death ends life is but 
slowly forced upon it by experience. If my dog saw 
something which recalled me after my death, he would 
accept the vision without the least shock of surprise ; the 
childish mind certainly, and, we ma}^ presume, the savage 
mind, is in the same stage." 

It is a dual body, and not the body that was ' ' covered 
with earth," that the "infantile intelligence " believes in. 
Is it possible that Mr. Stephen did not know this? Mr. 
E. B. Tylor, who in his "Primitive Culture" has examined 
the question thoroughly and without bias, tells us, that in 



312 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

reply to the question, "Are there spirits?" he found all 
nations, even those in the lowest state of culture, answer- 
ing Yes. And as if to show how directly opposed to the 
truth is Mr. Stephen's wild assumption, Tylor adds the 
following conclusive testimony (vol. i. pp. 384, 387) : 

" The belief in spiritual beings appears among all low 
races with whom we have attained to thoroughly intimate 
acquaintance. . . . The conception of a personal soul or 
spirit among the lower races may be defined as follows : It 
is a thin, unsubstantial, human image, in its nature a sort 
of vapor, film, or shadow — the cause of life and thought in 
the individual it animates; independently possessing the 
personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, 
past or present ; capable of leaving the bocVy far behind, to 
flash swiftly from place to place ; mostly impalpable and 
invisible, yet also manifesting physical power, and espe- 
cially appearing to man waking or asleep as a phantasm 
separate from the body of which it bears the likeness ; able 
to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men, 
of animals, and even of things." 

Mr. Stephen's notion, therefore, on which he bases so 
much of his abuse of Spiritualism and denial of immortal- 
ity, is simply a blunder unbecoming in one who assumes to 
give scientific instruction on the subject of the foundations 
of human belief in a future state, and who would ascribe it 
all to dreaming. 

In Mr. Tylor's account of the nature and genesis of the 
belief among the " low races," it is interesting to find how 
accurately their notions on the subject of the spiritual body 
correspond with those got from the well-established facts 
of Spiritualism. We are surprised that so subtle a thinker 
as Mr. Stephen should not have seen at once that the stub- 
born realism of that "infantile intelligence" of which he 
scornfully speaks, would of itself have saved it from con- 
founding the bod}- ' ' covered with earth and burned with 
fire " with the spiritual bod}' assumed by the departed hu- 
man being for the purpose of manifesting itself to mortals 






PACTS MUST RULE. 313 

in the flesh. It is just because the " infantile intelligence" 
of the savage is not " tolerant of contradictions," that he 
believes death has not ended the individuality of the man 
who can manifest himself in a form and dress similar to 
those by which he was known in the earth-life. 

Mr. Stephen's notion that a dog would not feel " a shock 
of surprise" at seeing the dead return, is a wholly gratui- 
tous and unscientific assumption. The dog that had lain 
stretched for days beside the lifeless body of his master, 
and had marked the decay of the once familiar features, 
would in all probability have run awa}-, howling with terror, 
if that master should suddenly have appeared to him in 
another but similar bocly, resuming the vigorous, life-like 
appearance, the absence of which was the cause of the 
poor brute's lamentation. The student of ps}'chological 
phenomena among the lower animals will recall numerous 
facts to justifv this conclusion. Dogs and horses have 
been known to show great agitation at occurrences which 
seemed to imply what a human being might call a spirit 
manifestation. 

" There is not even a fragment or shadow of ostensible 
reason," saj-s Mr. Stephen, " for confining immortality to 
man and excluding brutes." This is a too confident bit of 
dogmatism ; but he should have known that Spiritualists 
very generally do not exclude the brute creation from im- 
mortality. Space must be cheap in a universe without 
bounds, and Omnipotence is a great word. There is room 
enough for all. Mr. Stephen should not have been silent 
on the fact that eminent philosophers like Leibnitz, emi- 
nent Christians like Bishop Butler, and eminent physicists 
like Agassiz, have believed in the immortalit}^ of the lower 
animals. " The common opinion which would consign to 
an eternal death all organized beings, man alone excepted, 
would impoverish the universe," says Charles Bonnet, the 
great S wiss physicist ; and many Spiritualists agree with 



314 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

him. Nay, the}' go as far as Sir J. E. Smith, the eminent 
English botanist, who said, " I can no more explain the 
physiology of vegetables than of animals without the hy- 
pothesis of a living principle in both." If there is an illim- 
itable spirit- world, and if life is a blessing, why should 
anything perish utterly in its spiritual part any more than 
in its physical? 

Plutarch says: "The corruption or death of any creat- 
ure is not its annihilation or reduction into a mere nothing, 
but rather a sending of the dissolved being into an invis- 
ible state." To the inquiry whether the soul is immortal, 
Apollonius, one of the great mediums of antiquity, replied, 
"Yes, immortal, but like everything." The essential life 
of all things is imperishable. In the present state of sci- 
entific discover}', he who believes only in the existence of 
what he can see and weigh is not so much skeptical as 
credulous, and this would seem to be the predicament of 
Mr. Stephen ; for the fact that the soul parts with its mor- 
tal bod}' seems to him conclusive that it parts with every 
possible kind of organism through which it may still pre- 
serve its individuality ; and yet chemical and mechanical 
science admits that an electro-luminous organism, invisible 
to the external vision, is among the possibilities. 

" Still less can any argument," he says, " be given for a 
future immortality which is not equally valid in favor of the 
past." What he would seem to mean here is that post- 
mortem existence implies eternal pre-existence, — a view 
which Plato entertained, which man}' modern Spiritualists, 
including nearly all those in France, who are disciples of 
Allan Kardec, adhere to, and which some commentators 
attribute to Christ himself. The attempt to use the hy- 
pothesis against the current belief in immortality merely 
betrays the shifts to which Mr. Stephen resorts in his spe- 
cial pleading. That all souls pre-existed potentially in 
God is good orthodox teaching. 






PACTS MUST RULE. 315 

"Dream-land" is the favorite phrase on which Mr. 
Stephen rings the changes to belittle the belief in immor- 
tality. This " dream-land," he tells us, "is the embodi- 
ment of our hopes and fears." " The plastic world of the 
imagination yields to every passionate longing that stirs 
our natures." "The whole process is poetical in sub- 
stance." " Pure emotion knows of no limits." 

That he sincerely regards this as a final solution of the 
whole mystery we do not doubt ; for he has the convenient 
faculty of turning a deaf ear to facts which threaten to 
dislocate his nicely adjusted theory. He poses himself in 
an attitude of supercilious pity towards the fast multiplying 
host of witnesses who testify to certain phenomena justi- 
fying the spiritual hypothesis. Such men he regards either 
as mendacious or under an hallucination. 

He distrusts the authority of the emotions as compared 
with the speculative faculty by which he arrives at his con- 
clusions. The real appeal, he tells us, of those who believe 
in immortality, is " the appeal to the emotions." His own 
severe logic we, the simple ones, would supersede " by a 
simple appeal to emotion." 

Now the belief in immortality, founded on the thoughtful 
observation of actual phenomena and on personal expe- 
rience, is no more "emotional" than Franklin's belief in 
the electricity he drew from the clouds was emotional. 
The assertion that the conviction of immortality in the 
mind of man, whether savage or civilized, is not in reality 
a belief, but made of such stuff as dreams are, shows the 
audacity of inexperience rather than the sobriety born of 
knowledge. We have given Mr. Tylor's confutation of the 
statement. Any one conversant with the writings of the 
fathers of the Christian church, especially of Origen, Ter- 
tullian, and Augustine, will bear testimony to the fact that 
the objective phenomena, indicating the agency of spirits, 
with which they were personally familiar, seem to form the 



316 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

very foundation of their earnest belief in immortality. 
The records of the Catholic church show how largely the 
belief has been vivified and intensified by a knowledge of 
phenomena to which the church herself has borne witness, 
and which she never has repudiated, though imposture may 
have been often mingled with genuine marvels. 

The emotions may be mistaken in their swift conclusions, 
and so may the speculative reason err in its careful judg- 
ments. Infallibility is predicated of One alone. But the 
emotion that rebels at injustice, or flames up at meanness, 
or wakens to a tender delight at recognition of the beauti- 
ful — whether in external nature or in human action : — is it 
not as likely to point to the eternally true as the reason 
which leads Mr. Stephen into the blunders to which I have 
directed attention? He speaks of the " poetical process" 
as if it were necessarily at variance with the scientific — as 
if, amid all that is s}"mbolic and metaphorical in poetry, 
the grandest truths of existence were not often intuitively 
uttered by the uneducated and inexperienced bard. What 
has given Shakspeare his immense reputation if not the 
truths for which he finds expressive utterance, the touches 
of nature by which he makes the whole world kin? The 
higher " poetical process" may often be that where the 
poet is possessed by a universal truth, and made to 
" wreak it on expression." The lower may be that where 
he controls instead of being controlled, and loses his high 
inspiration. Even Shelle}', as I have clearly shown, while 
externally an atheist, was internally a " demoniac man," 
with a faith in immortality intense enough to be the equiv- 
alent of knowledge. 

The mistake of reasoners like Mr. Stephen is in weigh- 
ing in the scales of the speculative reason alone a subject 
which demands the co-operation of all the faculties and all 
the energies, latent and developed, of the whole man for 
its consideration. To rule out all emotional and psychical 



PACTS MUST RULE. 317 

testimony, and say to the unaided Reason, "Now you 
alone shall decide this question of immortality," (as if 
observation had not contradicted reason in thousands of 
great historical instances!) is as unwise as it would be 
while sitting in a railroad car not yet in motion, as another 
train moves by, to say to the sense of sight, "Now you 
alone shall decide whether our train is moving." 

Emotions that contradict the reason ofteu reach to a 
higher truth than Reason ever dreamed of. John May- 
nard, who stood at the helm of a burning steamboat till he 
could run it ashore, and saved a hundred lives by risking 
and losing his own, — was it his hesitating reason, or his 
swift emotional nature, that impelled him to the heroic 
deed ? Is the nobleness of such a self-sacrifice any the less 
true because born of the emotions ? 

The function of the meditative reason, seizing only upon 
the relations of things, is important, and Spiritualists, who 
base so much on its deductions, should be the last to dis- 
pute this ; but there is a reason deeper than that which 
even argues and doubts ; even the reason which feels and 
decides without any conscious ratiocination or balancing 
of arguments. Therefore is it fundamentally true that 
"Nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or given in the 
affections and intuitions, and discussion and inquiry do but 
little more than feed temperament." * 

As men used formerly to build up their mundane systems 
irrespective of the facts of geology and astronomy, so 
would pseudo-scientists in our day build up or pull down 
psychological systems, irrespective of the facts of som- 
nambulism, mesmerism, and modern spiritualism. Mr. 
Tylor, as if anticipating a recent extraordinary disquisi- 
tion from the pen of Mr. Frederic Harrison, truly remarks 
that " there has arisen a psychology which no longer has 
anything to do with soul ; " and jet the definition of the 

* Dr. J. J. G. Wilkinson. 



318 



THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 



soul, he tells us, " has remained from the first that of an 
animating, separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of indi- 
vidual existence." If belief in a future life has been at 
any time " a dream, and not strictly speaking a belief," it 
is because subjective speculations have been substituted for 
objective facts. Among earl}' Christians the conception of 
a soul-body involved, larva-like, in the earth-body — a 
conception simple, obvious, and aboriginal — was generally 
held up to the time of Gregory of Nyssa (331-394), and 
of Augustine (354-430) . 

"It is manifest," says Hallam, "to any one who has 
read the correspondence of Descartes (1640), that the tenet 
of the soul's immateriality, instead of being general, as we 
are apt to presume, was by no means in accordance with 
the common opinion of his age." And Descartes, let it be 
noted, taught that there are no valid proofs of the souVs 
immortality except those founded on revelation. In full 
S}'mpathy with the negative part of this notion, the modern 
Atheistic and Sadducean school would repudiate the proofs 
which Spiritualism brings of supersensual powers in man. 

It is not to be marvelled at that these philosophers 
should be so extreme in their denunciations. Just as a 
Sadducean science seemed to be having things its own 
way, — narrowing down the notion of a substantial soul till, 
small by degrees and beautifully less, it was lost in outright 
unbelief, — up starts this portentous, ill-favored, modern 
Spiritualism, with its grotesque, unaccountable phenomena, 
and threatens to undo the work that the Buchners and the 
Haeckels, the Stephens, Frederic Harrisons, and Cliffords 
have been so bushy engaged in. Is it a wonder that they 
lose their temper ? 

Mr. Stephen stigmatizes as "mere greediness for life" 
the belief of some minds in immortality. Just before this, 
with a slight inconsistency, he told us there is no belief at 
all, " only a dream." But now " it may mean the intense 



FACTS MUST RULE. 319 

dislike of a selfish nature to part from all chance of en- 
jo3 T ment." "It means so strong a regard for one's own 
wretched little individuality that the universe seems worth- 
less unless it is preserved." 

And may not conscious mind logically and rightfully 
regard the whole material universe as worthless in compar- 
ison with itself? What is a universe of mere dust, and 
fire, and gas, compared with "the wretched little individ- 
ual^ " of a Shakspeare or a Newton ? The mind that can 
create the beautiful, or measure suns and systems and their 
movements, is it not something grander than the suns and 
systems themselves, if these are to be dissociated, as they 
are in the philosophy of Mr. Stephen, from, all reference to 
a Divine Orderer ? 

If, in using the phrase " greediness for life," Mr. Stephen 
means anything, he means to stigmatize by a dishonoring 
word that intense longing for a better and nobler state of 
existence, which many of the most exalted minds, of which 
we have any record, have experienced. That this longing 
may sometimes be felt b}^ a " selfish nature" is not denied, 
and so may the apath} T or the dislike that rests in indiffer- 
ence, or craves annihilation, be either a selfish prompting 
or a morbid idios}'ncrasy. But an appreciation of the pos- 
sibilities of life in an inexhaustible universe, and an intense 
desire to live and to love and to learn, in view of all that 
there is to live for and to love and to learn, may be a sen- 
timent of all the most grateful to the Giver of life, sup- 
posing that there is an intelligent Giver. If it be selfish- 
ness, it is a selfishness godlike, aspiring, and communicative 
as the sun — a selfishness which all loving souls would com- 
mend as higher and better than the absence of it. 

Mr. Stephen cannot well ignore the nobility of that de- 
sire for immortality inspired by the pure affections. He 
condescends to refer to it with an air of patronizing sym- 
pathy. He sa} T s of that " plastic world of the imagina- 



820 THE UNSEEN WORLD A REALITY. 

tion," by which he characterizes the future life, "A world 
thus framed rua3 x , at times, represent the streugth of love. 
We cannot and we will not believe in the loss of those 
whose lives seemed to be part of our essence. A belief 
caused b} T (I cannot say based upon) this passionate 
3'earning is so pathetic, and even sacred, that the unbe- 
liever may well shrink from breathing his doubts in its 
presence." 

And then our compassionate "unbeliever" wipes his 
e} T es, and goes on to say what he can to persuade the 
world that there is no future life, that it is all a dream- 
land, and that the saints, seers, and devout thinkers of the 
ages have been no better than idle and imbecile visionaries, 
imagining that the} T believed when they were only dream- 
ing. He entirely ignores the vital, momentous fact, that 
the belief of saints and sages may have culminated in actual 
knowledge through their acquaintance with our phenomena. 

The mind so circumscribed in the limitations of a crass, 
dead materialism that it cannot even believe that other men 
really ever believed in immortality, is rather a hopeless 
subject for argument or for fact. I have no expectation of 
softening the wrath which Mr. Stephen has expressed 
towards Spiritualism, but I trust that before venturing to 
discourse again upon the genesis of the belief in immortal- 
ity, he will look a little into the facts, and explain them if 
he can. His assertion that there is no element in the be- 
lief but dreams and emotions, is exploded by a crushing 
weight of evidence to the contrary. 

From actual phenomena known to savages as well as to 
civilized men, issues the first serious belief in immortality. 
As far back as tradition can go we find the belief, and we 
find indications of the origin of the belief. All history, all 
mythology, all literature, all medical science, contribute 
concurrent evidence to the establishment of this fact. The 
studious Spiritualist finds the phenomena corroborated and 



FACTS MUST RULE. 321 

explained by the occurrences of our own da} T . The He- 
brew and Christian Scriptures are a rich repository of these 
facts, many of which have no significance without the ke} r 
that an intelligent Spiritualism supplies. Their unequivocal 
resemblance to those of the present day shows that they all 
belong to the same group. 

Shallow and superficial investigators would relegate all 
spiritual phenomena to "dream-land," or treat them as 
explicable b} r prepossession, hallucination, hypnotism, or 
some kind of imposture. But such explanations no longer 
carry weight. Careful observers are beginning to multiply, 
and they demand a solution that shall not wholly ignore the 
irrepressible facts. When many thousands of intelligent 
contemporaries can testify to the reality of direct writing in 
broad daylight, under conditions in which there is nothing 
at variance with the most complete scientific satisfaction, 
the stupendous phenomenon is not to be got rid of bj T a 
"pooh-pooh," or by any oracular talk of "dream-land" 
and the fallibility of the " emotions." 

The time has come when men who claim to be scientific 
must look such facts squarely in the face. And the time 
has also come when such speculations as those of Mr. 
Stephen in regard to the question of the origin of the be- 
lief in immortality, will be of little value unaccompanied 
by an admission and explanation of the great phenomena 
of Spiritualism. These have been placed bej^oncl the 
range of the sharpest sarcasm, the most elaborate antago- 
nism of the clever writers and amateur philosophers ; and 
the best plan now for such opponents is to frankly admit 
them, and then try, like Mr. Stuart-G-lennie, to show that 
they have no spiritual significance. Perhaps they may be 
more successful than he has been in the attempt. 

21 



322 THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE SENTIMENT OF IMMORTALITY NOT UNIVERSAL. — MISS 

MARTINEAU. WM. HUMBOLDT. BRADLAUGH. STRAUSS. 

FELIX ADLER. EMERSON. BAXTER. R. G. INGER- 

SOLL. DEMONIAC MEN. W. K. CLIFFORD. THE EMO- 
TIONS VERSUS THE INTELLECT. 

If we may credit human testimony, the desire for a con- 
tinuation of life after the dissolution of the earthly body is 
very different in different minds. To some, and probably 
to the large majority, the idea of utter extinction is repul- 
sive. To others, and among them are persons of high 
culture and a pure morality, the desire seems to be feeble 
or fluctuating. 

Acquiescence in a false psychology, with the adoption of 
the Cartesian notion, extinguishing the old belief in a spir- 
itual organism, has been influential, not only in bringing 
about the prevalent skepticism in regard to immortality, 
but in engendering the indifference which is sometimes felt. 
That this often springs from mere temperament is also true. 
But erroneous conceptions in regard to man's ps} T chical 
nature must unquestionably lead to notions which have their 
effect in impairing the natural desire for life's continuance. 

I was well acquainted with the late Harriet Martineau 
when she was residing in Washington in the winter of 1834. 
She was then, if we may judge from her writings, a Unita- 
rian. Subsequently she lapsed into atheism ; but this seems 
to have been rather sentimental or temperamental than 
rational. " How absurd and shocking it is," she writes in 



THE SENTIMENT OF IMMORTALITY. 823 

one of her letters, " to be talking every day about our own 
passing moods and paltry interests to a supposed author 
and guide of the universe." But if that author is at the 
same time believed to be the source of our own life and 
nature, where is the logical absurdity? Here, instead of a 
reason or an argument, she simply expresses the state of 
her own feelings, or her own unreasoned conclusions, as if 
those were authoritative in the case. 

But the judgment of one without an ear for music in re- 
gard to the productions of Mozart or Beethoven is about as 
valuable as Miss Martineau's opinion on a question involv- 
ing the exercise of the devotional, or even the poetical 
faculty. She could believe in clairvoyance — in the power 
of a mortal in the flesh to read the thoughts of another 
person at a distance ; but the conception of a clairvoyant, 
omniscient God was to her mind ' ' so irreverent " as to 
make her " blush, so misleading " as to make her " mourn." 

I fear there was something morbid in that "blush" — 
something that confounded moral or spiritual nudity with 
physical. To the philosophic mind meditation on the proofs 
of a clairvoyant faculty in finite man renders more easy the 
conception of an infinitely clairvoyant intelligence. To 
Miss Martineau it was suggestive of no grand possibility, 
not even of a supersensual faculty in her own constitution, 
pointing to uses be3 T ond the tomb. The obvious signifi- 
cance in the great facts adverse to her Sadducean theory 
she either blindly ignored or set aside as cancelled by her 
own individual feelings on the subject. She had passion 
and earnestness ; she could hate better than she could love ; 
but she had no grand enthusiasm. From music she was 
excluded by her deafness. In the poetical faculty, so nearly 
allied to the devotional, she was deficient. Not one of her 
attempts at versification is now remembered by the many. 
Of philosophy she knew little ; plainly her gifts did not lie 
in that direction. Yet with all these defects and perver- 



324 THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT. 

sious, with an utter absence of that insight which pene- 
trates beneath the surface of things to the latent beauty or 
significance, there were few subjects in regard to which she 
did not have full confidence that Harriet Martineau could 
speedily qualify herself to become a teacher. In this self- 
confidence lay the secret of much of her power and suc- 
cess. She was a read} T , industrious writer, commanding a 
style clear, animated, and incisive ; but as an original 
thinker she has left no memorable work. 

William Humboldt, brother of Alexander, offers another 
instance of one in whom the desire for immortalnry seems 
to have lacked the force of a motive. "I must avow it 
frankly," ne says, " that, right or wrong, I do not hold much 
to the hope of another life. I could not make for myself 
another existence out of my human ideas, and yet it is im- 
possible for me to make it out of any other. I regard death 
with absolute calmness, but without desire or enthusiasm." 
If William Humboldt could have acquainted himself with 
our phenomena, he would have learned, perhaps, that his 
" human ideas" in regard to a future life were more in har- 
mony- with the actual facts than he had ever dared to hope. 

Charles Bradlaugh, the English secular leader and mem- 
ber of Parliament, seems to have been made somewhat un- 
easy by the spread of Spiritualism. He tells us he has cast 
off all belief in a future life, and that he feels remarkably 
well after it. He is above the miserable weakness of ever 
wishing to see again the parents, children, brothers, sisters, 
or friends, who he believes have passed on to blank annihi- 
lation. Some years ago there was a public discussion on 
the subject of a future life between him and James Burns, 
the well-known publisher of Spiritual books and periodicals. 
It ended, like all such discussions, in an acknowledgment 
of defeat by neither party. 

But one fact was made evident. The only way in which 
Bradlaugh could make a show of maintaining his Sudducean 



THE SENTIMENT OF IMMORTALITY. 325 

doctrine was by ignoring our facts. Tell him of clairvo}'- 
ance, direct writing, or spirit-hands, and all he could say in 
reply was, Not proven. He claimed to pursue the deduc- 
tive, a priori method (like Dr. Beard), and his facile logic 
lay ia discrediting well-known phenomena. Mr. Burns pur- 
sued the inductive method, presenting an impregnable array 
of facts. Mr. Bradlaugh opposed to these facts his own 
"true inwardness," his deductive reasoning, and his purely 
individual convictions. His excuse for this course was 
that it was not his business to explain certain psychological 
phenomena, or to bring forward any scientific facts in op- 
position. " My reason against } T our facts ! " seemed to be 
the sum and substance of his arguments. 

Now it plainly was Mr. Bradlaugh's business to show, 
either that psychological phenomena do not occur, or that 
there are no grounds for the induction that they are solved 
by the spiritual theorj^. This he failed to do, and this he 
did not even attempt to do ; and it was well remarked that 
there was more logic in the lucid presentation of facts by 
Mr. Burns than in all the artificial mechanism of abstruse 
propositions b} T which Mr. Bradlaugh assumed to evade the 
force of those facts. 

He exhibits the bigotry of the extreme Churchman in the 
following remark, from which it would seem that there is 
an orthodoxy in secularism as well as in sectarian religion : 

' 'Although at present it may be perfectly true that all men 
who are secularists are not yet atheists, I put it to } t ou as 
perfectly true that in my opinion the logical consequence 
of secularism must be, that the man gets to atheism if he has 
brains enough to comprehend. . . . The whole basis of our 
secular cause is in direct ignoring and denial of the possi- 
bility of any such state of existence " (*. e. of any future 
state). 

So it would seem that in order to satisfy the orthodox}" 
of this secular Pope, a man must "ignore and deny the 



326 THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT. 

very possibility of a future state of existence." " There is 
no God — and Charles Bradlaugh is his prophet!" Such 
would seem to be the temper of his fulminations against 
those "brainless" persons entertaining the theistic belief, 
and against the possibility of an hereafter for man. 

The wonder is, if he is sincere, that he should give him- 
self the slightest concern as to what other persons may 
think in regard to Spiritualism, Republicanism, or anything 
else. If thought springs from a mere accidental disposition 
of certain molecules of matter, how can there be any abso- 
lute standard of truth? If people will not think as he 
wants them to, wiry not blame the molecules, and there let 
the matter rest? If matter and chance are kings, what 
logic is there in his taking the trouble he does ? 

Belief in spirit, in God, or in gods, comes to the race, 
civilized or uncivilized, through evidences of certain super- 
sensual phenomena, as manifested by men in the flesh and 
by spirits out of the flesh. And this belief is what Mr. 
Bradlaugh is trying to extirpate. He does not experience 
such things. Why should he believe that any one else ever 
did ? But he is no more an infallible representative of the 
human race than the horse who used to eat beefsteaks 
was a representative of the equine race. The genus horse 
is graminivorous notwithstanding. Bradlaugh's mistake is 
in making his own idiosyncrasies and his own limited facul- 
ties the measure of the universe. He knows nothing about 
spirits, therefore there can be no spirit- world, and seership 
is all a delusion ! He has no longing for immortalnyr, 
therefore nobody else ought to have ! 

There was not long ago an illiterate mental calculator in 
Scotland who was asked how manj^ letters there would be 
in a year's file of a daily newspaper of eight pages, each 
page having seven columns, each column one hundred and 
ninety lines, and each line thirty-two letters. The true an- 
swer, 139,873,440, was given in ten seconds. Shall we deny 



THE SENTIMENT OP IMMORTALITY. 327 

the possibility of such a faculty because it ma}' be unde- 
veloped in our own mental structure ? 

In his last work, " The Old Faith and the New," David 
F. Strauss tells us that the prospect of "the eternal per- 
sistence of life" would fill him "with clisma} 7 ." But in 
saying this he ignores facts and analogies which might per- 
haps make the prospect less intolerable. He ignores the 
possible existence of ps} T chical powers in our own constitu- 
tion, which may proportion our day to our strength, and 
adapt our future horizons to our future capacities and needs. 
Above all, he sets aside the possibility of the superintend- 
ence of an infinite^ beneficent Power, who has not so made 
us that life, in our healthy moods and rightly used, would 
ever be other than a blessing. 

If we disregard all those facts of discrete mental states 
and other phenomena, verified in the testimony I have pre- 
sented, we may logically fall into that state of " dismay " 
by which Strauss was affected. Spiritualism would have 
showed him how like the cry of a child in the dark were 
his apprehensions. It would have forced him to realize that 
the nature of man is complex ; that there is an outward 
and an inward consciousness, distinct though not inherently 
separate, and that the inward may smile at the " dismay " 
felt bjr the outward at a prospect to which the faculties of 
the superior organism may stretch forward with a joyful at- 
traction. 

Mr. Felix Adler, the well-known liberal preacher, objects 
to what he calls the ' ' morbid craving for immortality ; " 
and even R. W. Emerson frowns upon what he stigmatizes 
as this " lust " after a knowledge of our immortalit}^. Mr. 
Adler would direct the attention of men to ' ' the more ur- 
gent needs of the present, of the here.'" Surely if anything 
can do that it must be Spiritualism, since it regards the 
future as but a continuation of present individual life, col- 
ored and shaped by the character and the affections, de- 



328 THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT. 

veloped or formed in the " here." The subject has now be- 
come a branch of the physiology of the species. 
^ It is not the too much but the too little of a genuine aspi- 
ration (call it craving if } t ou will) to immortality that makes 
human life so often to our eyes a failure. Not the craving 
for more life, but the lack of appreciation of life itself, its 
vast significance, its splendid opportunities, and the over- 
whelming proofs which we now have of its continuance into 
another stage of being, with our individuality unimpaired, 
our affections purified and enlarged, — this is the real defect 
to be deplored. 

To maintain that a new era of moral earnestness could 
be brought about without the great factor of a trust in im- 
mortality, is an assumption wholly at variance with the 
facts of human nature, taken, not in their exceptional 
aspects, but in the general intuitions and experiences of 
the race. 

A ' ' rationalistic religion " with the element of immor- 
tality left out is a delusion. Mr. Adler would have us 
adorn life with all nobleness, all deep affection, and all 
strenuous effort, and at the same time to be so indifferent 
to life x>er se, that we shall cherish no intense wish for its 
continuance bej'ond the charnel-house ; to love children, 
parents, friends, with profound affection, and yet to be 
quite indifferent to the question whether or no, after the 
agony of parting on this shore of time, we are likely to see 
them in another and a better world. 

His assertion that " the common opinion about souls orig- 
inated in an erroneous explanation of the phenomena of 
dreams," is a repetition of one of Strauss's arguments, and 
is an utter fallacy in the sense in which it is presented. 
The history of Spiritualism shows that the belief in immor- 
tality was inspired by actual objective phenomena, and by 
the medial powers of the soul itself, prompted often, per- 
haps, by the influence of independent spirits. 



THE SENTIMENT OF IMMORTALITY. 329 

Utterly fallacious, too, is the notion that an assured 
knowledge of a future life, such as many Spiritualists now 
have, would be inconsistent with the activities of the present. 
All history shows that the most active men in their da} r and 
generation have been men who had what Goethe calls the 
" demoniac " nature ; men interiorly aware of their spiritual 
endowments, and often wiser than they knew in regard to 
a future life ; such men as Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristotle, 
Cicero, Plutarch, Mahomet, Shakspeare, Richard Baxter, 
Martin Luther, Henry More, John Weskyv, Melancthon, 
Swedenborg, Robert Burns, Benjamin Franklin, George 
Washington, Thomas Paine, Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis 
Napoleon, Thiers, Guizot, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Bismarck, 
&c. Most of these men knew our phenomena and were 
avowed Spiritualists in the modern sense ; and all believed 
in the soul's immortality. Look at the amount of activity 
compressed into the earth-lives of these men. Mr. Adler 
must reverse his theory if he would have it in keeping with 
notorious facts. 

The sentiment of immortality, as it relates to the pure 
affections, the love of kindred and friends, is a considera- 
tion which must not be left out of the account, though I 
have shown that the positive belief in immortality springs 
less from the emotional side of our nature than from the 
rational, when fortified by the actual phenomena w r hich have 
made the belief so universal. "It is to that sense of im- 
mortality with which the affections inspire us," says Henry 
Thomas Buckle, " that I would appeal for the best proof 
of a future life." " It must be true because it is a necessity 
of the affections," said Hortense Bonaparte. The normal 
and natural feeling is well expressed by Richard Baxter 
(1615-1691), one of the most estimable of English theo- 
logians. He sa} T s : 

41 1 must confess, as the experience of my own soul, that 
the expectation of loving my friends in heaven principally 



330 THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT. 

kindles my love to them on earth. If I thought I should 
never know them and consequently never love them after 
this life is ended, I should in reason number them with 
temporal things, and love them as such. But I now delight 
to converse with my friends, in a firm persuasion that I 
shall converse with them forever ; and I take comfort in 
those that are dead or absent, as believing I shall shortly 
meet them in heaven, and love them with a heavenly love 
that shall there be perfected." 

Few men probably have uttered more sarcasms in ridicule 
of the Bible and the grounds for a belief in immortality 
than Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, of Illinois, a man of great 
natural endowments and a ready eloquence. But at the 
funeral of his brother, E. C. Ingersoll, in Washington, 
D. C, June 2d, 1879, this accomplished scoffer, giving way 
to the emotional element in his nature, changed his tone 
somewhat while in the face of death, and said : 

" Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks 
of two eternities ; we strive in vain to look be}~ond the 
heights ; we cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of 
our wailing cry ; from the voiceless lips of the unreprying 
dead there comes no word, but in the night of death hope sees 
a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He 
who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of 
death for the return of health, whispered with his latest 
breath, ' I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of 
doubts and dogmas, and tears and fears, that these dear 
words are true of all the countless dead." 

" Stars and rustling wings ! " Truly it would seem that 
the emotional nature is more than a match for the intel- 
lectual, when some dread reality summons it to the rescue. 
It is when sorrow makes it a necessity of the heart that the 
certainty of our own immortalit}^ and that of our beloved 
flashes through the clouds of doubt and anguish to the heart 
in which love has really yet a place. 

To the man at once strong in the affections, and knowing 
our spiritual facts, the " narrow vale between the cold and 



THE SENTIMENT OF IMMORTALITY. 331 

barren peaks of two eternities," is the vestibule to an am- 
pler life ; and death, instead of coming in his old skeleton 
form with a clait in his hand, comes as a gracious angel, 
beckoning us to a fairer shore, and to a reunion with the 
near and dear already there. 

Professor W. K. Clifford, an English mathematician of 
rare promise, died in 1879, at the age of thirty-four. Up 
to the time of his taking his college degree he held ' ' ex- 
treme High-Church notions." A rebound from one extreme 
to its opposite is apt to occur ; and so it is not surprising 
that he became ' ' an extreme and uncompromising rational- 
ist," and made " many enemies by the relentless severity 
of his writing on topics that are conventionally handled with 
delicacy and caution." He drew his little diagram of the 
whole origin and scheme of the universe as dexterously as 
he would a geometrical figure on his blackboard. A little 
mind-stuff here and a little matter-stuff there, and the whole 
puzzle was solved. At least so thought Mr. Clifford at ail 
age when most of our great men have just begun to realize 
faintly the depths of their own ignorance. One single proof 
of direct writing annihilates his whole Sadclucean system. 

We are told that among his " advanced" views was that 
of " the finality of conscious existence in this life ; " that he 
" looked for no future, but saw and knew the inutility of 
wasting one's thoughts in vain expectations." His dogma- 
tism, based on undemonstrated Irypotheses, was singularly 
at variance with his mathematical training. Freed from his 
professional limitations, his imagination, unchecked by sci- 
entific certainties, seemed to revel in the wildest flights of 
mere speculation. 

We are told by Mr. Pollock, his biographer, that " as 
never man loved life more, so never man feared death less ; " 
to which it is added : ' ' he fulfilled well and truty that great 
saying of Spinoza, often in his mind and on his lips : ' Ho- 
mo liber cle nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat' (the free 



332 



THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT. 



man thinks of nothing less than of death) ." But if the sen- 
timent was " often in his mind and on his lips," then he 
must have thought of death a good deal ; else why the fre- 
quent vaunt that he did not think of it? I see nothing 
especially admirable in an apathetic attitude towards death. 
It is often as much a proof of imbecility as of mental 
strength. The Chinese coolie has it in perfection. 

One of Clifford's remarks was this: " We are going to 
establish ourselves in a godless world and cast our eyes. up 
to a soulless sky." Of course the utterer of this absurdity 
was the bitter opponent of Spiritualism, which roused him 
as a red flag rouses the bull of the arena ; and no wonder, 
since our preterhuman phenomena are the downfall and the 
disgrace of his crude speculations. These phenomena are 
more easily demonstrated now than mairy of the conclusions 
of orthodox science ; more accessible than many admitted 
facts in pathology ; as verifiable as those of analytic chem- 
istry, or of physical astrononry. 

Providence has thus given us something more than the 
testimoiry of the affections — unspeakably precious as that 
is — something more than the affirmations of the heart, on 
which to found our trust in immortality. When a new 
generation shall be trained up to accept it as a fact of 
science, the effect cannot fail to be conducive to the moral 
and religious advancement of civilized man. 

To rise to the "height of that great argument," — the 
proofs of the soul's immortality, — we must realize that 
there is a soul, at once transcendent and immanent, in the 
macrocosm as well as in the microcosm ; in the universe as 
well as in this fleeting apparition of flesh and bones forming 
man's plrysical organism. Without such a conviction there 
can be no earnest religious feeling, free from all supersti- 
tion and disharmony. And without religious feeling a 
knowledge of our immortality lacks that element of vitality 
and aspiration which can make it a power for good, a reno- 



THE SENTIMENT OP IMMORTALITY. 333 

vator, a purifier, and an nplifter. Unless there is a supreme 
spiritual tribunal of absolute right, justice, and love in the 
cosmos, immortality would be a doubtful boon; having 
faith in such, and thus having faith in God, we see rifts of 
light through all that is obscure ; the significance and 
grandeur of life begin to dawn upon our finite and fallible 
minds, and the evils, perplexities, and sufferings of this 
brief span of time are lost in the ineffable compensations of 
eternity. Without the bias imparted by such a rational 
and inspiring hope, a knowledge of the mere externals of 
Spiritualism may carry with it no more of saving grace than 
a knowledge of the tricks of a juggler or the feats of an 
acrobat. 

The greatest truths address themselves more to the feelings 
and the will than to the intellect. A truth like immortalitj" 
must be felt before it can really become a truth to the in- 
dividual. The frigid assent of the intellect alone cannot 
make it an inspiration and a sanctifying force. The merely 
phenomenal facts having been investigated and accepted as 
true, a life-long task, nay, a never-ending task, lies before 
us in studying the relations of the stupendous truth to 
life, to science, to philosophy, morality, and religion. Sure- 
ly if " Gocl and immortalhVy " was a creed sufficient for the 
prophets, and for Christ, it is sufficient for the earnest 
Spiritualist ; for it includes all that there is of true and 
essential in all the creeds and all the religions ever formu- 
lated in the thoughts of the pure in heart. The fatherhood 
of God, the confraternity of all intelligences partaking in 
the divine life, the immortality of all souls, the supremacy 
of the law of love, and of the law of right, — such are the 
great realities which Christ came to teach ; and such are 
what Spiritualism reaffirms. 



334 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THEISM IN THE LIGHT OF SPIRITUALISM. THE DIVINE PER- 
SONALITY. THE INSTINCT OF PRATER. THE - GENERALI- 
ZATION ENCIRCLING ALL OTHERS. THE DOCTRINE OF 

SPHERES. PSYCHOMETRY. ILLUSTRATIVE FACTS. ORI- 
GIN OF THE THEORY OF OBJECT-SOULS. INCAUTIOUS IN- 
VESTIGATORS. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 

I have said elsewhere that Spiritualism is not a form of 
religion. So far as it is a realization of the great facts of 
God and immortality, it is religion itself. It proves to us 
the existence of ethereal beings, exercising a preterhuman 
power over matter. Nay, it proves that our deceased 
friends are still alive, and, inferential!}-, that there must be 
a spirit-world, however impenetrable it may be to mortal 
sense. 

It would be a narrow conception not to suppose that 
what is true of our planet ma}- be possible for all others 
throughout the universe ; that they too may have their 
human occupants, some perhaps with organizations and 
powers superior to our own ; that every planet may have 
its spiritual sphere ; that all created intelligences must, 
either before or after the dissolution of the earth-bod}-, 
have, in some state, the privilege of intercommunication ; 
and that in the hierarchy of spirits there must be some 
inconceivably superior to all that it is our present priv- 
ilege to know of by direct experience. 

All these are inferences fairly cleducible from facts ; 
facts which have either been verified by actual scientific 



THE GREAT GENERALIZATION. 335 

demonstration, or which are analogous with such as have 
been so verified. But is there not still another, an all- 
comprehendiDg inference, which follows inevitably from 
those named? The cosmos shows the supremacy of one 
Intelligence and one Will. Even the atheistic philosophy 
of Hartmann claims to prove this by a series of acute dem- 
onstrations drawn from the positive sciences. The theistic 
conception thus becomes corroborated b}' the practical 
proofs of the existence of finite and subordinate spirits ; 
each one destined to realize at some period of his immortal 
life that he too is a child of the Infinite. 

The Supreme Being, if he has Intelligence and Will, 
must be also conscious, since there can be no knowledge 
without a consciousness of it, active in some state or other. 
Using the word person in its large and ultra-et3?mological 
sense, He must be also personal, since consciousness in- 
volves personality. This does not depend, as Schelling, 
Hartmann, and even A. J. Davis, seem to think, on indi- 
vidualization through organism, nor on the relativity of a 
person, — on the distinction of a me from a not me. An 
eminent philosophical physicist, Hermann Lotze, remarks : 

' ' Personality has its basis in pure selfhood — in self- 
consciousness — without reference to that which is not self. 
The personality of God, therefore, does not necessarily 
involve the distinction by God of himself from what is not 
himself, and so his limitation or finiteness ; on the contrary, 
perfect personality is to be found only in God, while in all 
finite spirits there exists only a weak imitation of per- 
sonality. The finiteness of the finite is not a productive 
condition of personality, but rather a bar to its perfect 
development." 

The fact that there are finite spirits, conscious and 
clairvoyant, to whom we are in some way related, would 
justify the human instinct of prayer. Surrounded as we 
are by hosts of witnesses, not only of our acts but of our 
verj' thoughts, we may well believe that, as Christ dis- 



336 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 

tinctly teaches in what he says of little children, there may 
be guardian spirits not inattentive to our wants, or impen- 
etrable to our appeals. Should it be said that this belief 
may lead to a kind of polytheism, the answer is, that, as we 
can look only to good spirits for good, these must be such 
as act, and would have us act, strictly in conformity with 
divine law. 

Many unconsidered cases of apparent spirit interposi- 
tion — as where a man by a sudden premonition gives up 
the idea of embarking in a certain steamer — may occur as 
answers to interior prayers, of which the individual is not 
normally conscious. A pra3'er for deliverance from plrys- 
ical danger may be answered without any violation of nat- 
ural law. Spiritualism teaches us that praj'er is -no mere 
shouting into a void, where there is no hearing and whence 
comes no response. One claiming to be a freed spirit 
saj's : ' ' We pray for help whenever we want it, let the 
object be what it may, except that it must not be an evil 
object. Whatever is done must be done by the divine 
sanction, and to Him your pra}'ers should be addressed. 
But he permits spirits to execute his decrees. You may 
call on that spirit of God which dwells in the souls of 
spirits to aid you. We do not pra}^ to spirits, but to God." 
All the great seers have been believers in the efficacy of 
prayer. 

Spiritualism being thus boundless in its diameter, and 
embracing not only the visible universe but the unseen in 
its indefinable circumference, — threatening to include and 
absorb all minor forms of religion in its great generaliza- 
tion of God and immortality, — it is not surprising that 
the organs of sects, not even omitting that little circle 
labelled "Free Religionists," should be disturbed bj^ the 
prospect of a" scientific basis" for Spiritualism, and that 
the} T should express their dissatisfaction, somewhat pre- 
maturely, in no measured terms. 






THE GREAT GENERALIZATION. 337 

One thing taught me by my early experiences in mes- 
merism was the fact that there is a spheral emanation from 
all substances or objects, physical or spiritual. If I mag- 
netized a handkerchief, or a tumbler of water, the somnam- 
bulic sensitive could always detect it. The test was re- 
peated under so many varying conditions that the fact was 
conclusively proved. Are we not told, in Acts (xix. 12), 
that from Paul ' ' were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs 
or aprons, and the diseases departed from them"? 

From vegetables and trees we know there are physical 
emanations which we detect as odors. May there not be 
emanations from the psychical nature, as well as the phys- 
ical — from that which thinks, as well as that which grows ? 
How often my somnambule used to say of persons to whom 
she was introduced, "I like," or "I do not like, his 
sphere ! " In the activity of this faculty we may find an 
explanation of some of the phenomena of ps}xhometry 
and trance-mediumship. It is not always necessary to 
hypothecate the agency of a freed spirit to account for 
these. The psychometrist touches a written paper or a frag- 
ment from an old building, and receives impressions which 
often turn out wonderfully accurate ; and the experiment 
has been repeated so often that no theory of chance will 
cover the facts. 

May there not be spiritual reliquiae^ psychic auras, ethe- 
real emanations, less transient than the physical, to which 
the medial subject is sensitive when brought within their 
sphere? He enters a room for the first time, and shudders 
at he knows not what. Gradually or swiftly an impression 
affects his consciousness, and he tells 3 7 ou that a murder or 
a suicide once occurred in that room. On inquiry you 
learn he is right. Whence came the impression? From 
some psychical aura left on the furniture or the walls, or 
from a communicating spirit? 

The action of light will impress an image on the surface of 



338 



CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 



inorganic objects. A familiar experiment is to lay a key ? 
or some other object, on a sheet of white paper and expose 
it for a few minutes to the action of sunlight, and then lay 
the paper away where it will not be disturbed. After sev- 
eral months, if the paper be carried into a dark place and 
laid on a piece of hot metal, the spectre of the key will ap- 
pear. 

Dr. J. W. Draper, Professor of Chemistry and Pirysiol- 
ogy in the University of New York, says : " I believe that 
a shadow never falls upon a wall without leaving there a 
permanent trace, — a trace which might be made visible by 
resorting to proper processes." 

If a wafer be laid on a surface of polished metal, which 
is then breathed upon, and if, when the moisture of the 
breath has evaporated, the wafer be shaken off, we shall 
find that the whole polished surface is not as it was before, 
although our senses can detect no difference ; for if we 
breathe again upon it the surface will be moist eveiy where 
except on the spot previously sheltered by the wafer, which 
will now appear as a spectral image on the surface. Again 
and again we breathe, and the moisture evaporates, but still 
the spectral wafer reappears. 

If such subtile effects may be produced b} T the agency of 
light, heat, or moisture, why may not thought be equally 
operative in leaving impressions recognizable by clairvoy- 
ant or spiritual senses? "The psychometrist," says Mrs. 
Maria M. King, "is impressed, in her or his sensitive or- 
ganization, by ethers of the many grades that inhere in 
substance and forms, and attach themselves like s} T mbolic 
characters to everything, and vaguely record unwritten 
histories of all times, all deeds, and all thoughts of men." 

"Because," sa} T s Mr. G. H. Stebbins, " a person quotes 
from books he never saw, or tells of what he never knew in 
any external way, that is not final proof that be is under 
an external spirit-control. Psychometry and clairvoyance 



THE GREAT GENERALIZATION. 66V 

may sometimes solve it all ; and sometimes we must accept 
the solution of direct spirit influence." 

In his " Origin of Civilization" Sir John Lubbock says, 
'* The so-called object-souls, souls of useful articles, — tools, 
implements, armor, houses, canoes, — have a place among 
the spirits of the inferior races ; " and he calls this " a pure- 
ly utilitarian conception of the soul." And yet the con- 
ception of the untutored savage may be an inference from 
actual phenomena, developed in his own psjxhometric ex- 
periences. That these may be mixed with delusions and 
false inferences is quite natural. 

Why is it, we are asked, that our phenomena, even when 
admitted, make so little impression on many minds? It 
maj r be because they are so engrossed in thoughts foreign 
to the subject that they cannot afford to give it due con- 
sideration ; or it may be that they fail to recognize its vast 
significance, through the non-development of a faculty by 
which spiritual facts are recognized and appreciated. 

A phenomenon that would excite even a dog's attention 
may be dismissed as meaningless by the unreceptive mind. 
One would think that a single positive experience in direct 
writing would give a man something to reflect on with in- 
terest for the rest of his life ; for it settles many questions 
in philosophy, theology, and positive science, which are still 
in dispute. It presents a fact utterly inexplicable by any 
theory consistent with the teachings of a Sadducean mate- 
rialism. 

After the putative spirits have demonstrated to us the 
essential fact that our deceased friends are still alive, — that 
spirits have a power over matter so great as to seem to us 
magical or miraculous, — are we not supplied with facts 
sufficient to challenge our best intellectual energy for their 
proper appreciation and study ? Would we have the spirits 
go on and, saving us the trouble of further thought, en- 
lighten us on subjects moral, religious, or scientific — sub- 



340 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 

jects coming within the province of our own mental powers 
and duties? 

How do we know that the very attempt to communicate 
with mortals does not place a spirit in a state of con- 
sciousness discrete from that which is habitual to him in the 
spirit- world — a state perhaps inferior to that, and one in 
which memory is clouded, or the power of thought is lim- 
ited? The argument might be analogically pressed. 

The. mistake of incautious investigators is in - not inakiug 
enough of the clearly demonstrated and demonstrable phe- 
nomena which they already have. They would seek new 
wonders before they have begun to digest or appreciate the 
old. The natural consequence has been that they offer, as 
it were, a bounty for all sorts of fraud. The instances are 
notorious wherein persons with some little measure of me- 
dial power, but sadly impecunious financially, have given 
way to the temptation of getting up manifestations wholly 
or partly spurious. Hence the exposures which have cre- 
ated the impression that all medial phenomena are impos- 
tures or delusions. The fault is largely with immature Spir- 
itualists themselves. They are too eager to witness and 
proclaim new and incredible phenomena. The demand nat- 
urally creates a supply and an over-supply. Some one me- 
dium, or medial pretender, tries to outdo his competitor 
in ministering to the blind, unhealthy appetite of over-hasty 
seekers, and hence come exaggerations and impositions. 
Such drawbacks are to be anticipated, but the course of 
Spiritualism must be none the less onward in the future, as 
it has been in the past, in spite of all rebuffs, misrepresen- 
tations, and assaults. 

The injunction to "try the spirits" must be literally 
heeded, even when they come objectively to the observer. 
It is a ruse of a certain class of spirits to try to excite at- 
tention by assuming distinguished names. The credulity 
that accepts without question the report of spirits calling • 



THE GREAT GENERALIZATION. 341 

themselves Moses, Elijah, Plato, Aspasi:;,* John the Bap- 
tist, Judas Iseariot, Bacon, Sweclenborg, &c, is quite as 
deplorable as the skepticism that rejects as baseless all these 
strange phenomenal manifestations. 

That distinct human forms, suitably clad, are presented, 
and this where no theory of human fraud or hallucination 
is tenable, is a fact which science has got to accept and 
deal with. That in some instances these forms are fairly 
recognized and identified ; that they can be seen, felt, and 
heard, " thus establishing their existence through the same 
three senses which take cognizance of the existence of our 
fellow-men ; " that they will prove by act or speech their 
relationship in the same way as persons do whom we do 
not scruple in our daily life to regard as bodily realities ; 
that they will manifest a preterhuman power over matter, 
and a wonderful clairvoyance in many surprising ways, far 
beyond the art of the conjurer, as the best conjurers them- 
selves now admit, is also a fact that science will have to 
deal with; since the facts are all the time multiplying, 
and the proofs becoming more cogent. 

The circumstance that scientific persons have, as a gen- 
eral rule, kept aloof from the whole great subject, partly 
through a misgiving as to their ability to cope with it, and 
partly through their own a priori objections and rooted 
prejudices, has left it largely in the hands of those who, 
from defective training, or from a lack of the critical fac- 
ulty, have supposed that all which may come from the un- 
seen world must be authoritative and right. Messages that 
violate all the laws of logic and common sense have thus 

* It is not denied that remarkable phenomena occur at times, which seem to 
favor the pretensions of these ancient spirits. Mr. A. L. Hatch, in a letter 
dated Astoria, L. I., Sept. 2, 1£80, writes : " Tour imagination cannot picture 
a form more perfect, more beautiful, than that of Aspasia standing before us. 
We asked if she could speak in Greek. She did so by giving us a Greek sen- 
tence, and what is more, quickly corrected me in the pronunciation of some of 
the words. I much doubt if there are living others who have been so coirected 
by a spirit of twenty-four centurios past." 



342 



CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 



been accepted as bona fide communications from the world's 
great departed thinkers. Obvious hoaxes have been imposed 
as genuine representations or revelations, because the}' came 
apparently corroborated b} T proofs of preterhuman power. 
Stories of matches and marriages in the unseen world have 
been swallowed because the operating forces, whether of 
human or spirit origin, could impress the unwary victim by 
objective proofs of what seemed, and probably was, pre- 
terhuman action or knowledge. 

These things only prove how important it is that science 
should change its attitude of haughty unconcern or abject 
fear towards our phenomena ; that a new system of ex- 
haustive investigation should be adopted ; one uniting the 
method that allows the spirits to fix their own conditions 
with the method that accepts nothing as proved until it is 
presented under conditions sufficient for the most thorough 
and rigorous scientific verification. There is some truth in 
the following observation by Mr. William Oxle}-, of Man- 
chester, England, a faithful investigator, who is one of those 
who would leave the operating spirits untrammelled by con- 
ditions ; but it is only one side of the truth which he pre- 
sents, and it must be supplemented by the other : 

" A genuine lover of truth for its own sake, who enters 
this domain of occult science accepting the conditions which 
are allowed, though beset in the commencement with doubts 
and difficulties, will, by perseverance, soon receive ample 
proofs and tests of the genuineness of psychometrical man- 
ifestations and spiritual agency ; while, on the other hand, 
the doubter who investigates for the purpose of discovering 
imposture and fraud, will discover what he or she thinks is 
sufficient to justify the pre-existing doubts, and sooner or 
later retires in disgust." 



Let me illustrate the truth of this by an incident. A cer- 
tain investigator objected strenuously to the condition of 
darkness under which the phenomenon of the floating guitar 



THE GREAT GENERALIZATION. 343 

was given. But he followed up the investigation neverthe- 
less ; and one evening, when a friendly burst of moonlight 
lighted up the whole room through an accidental misplacing 
of the curtain, he saw, what he had long wished to see, the 
guitar high up by the ceiling, aloof from any- visible sup- 
port, and played on by some unknown force exercising in- 
telligence. 

It is the part of wisdom, then, to investigate without 
prejudice under the conditions offered by- the spirits, but to 
admit nothing as proved until, by some unexpected en- 
largement of the conditions, the proof wanting is clearly 
obtained. 

That psychometric impressions unverified are to be 
trusted, would be a dangerous admission. Both psy-chom- 
etry and clairvoyance may be in fault, just as the man who 
has jumped a ditch once may miss it at the second trial. 
There is no such thing as finite infallibility-. I must, there- 
fore, wholly dissent from the notion of Dr. J. R. Buchanan, 
that " We can attain a definite and accurate knowledge 
to-day not only of Jesus, but of the Apostles and the 
entire group of characters mentioned in the Bible " through 
the psychometric or some related faculty-. All biographical 
history teaches us the fallacy of such pretensions ; warns 
us against their obvious incertitude and mischievous ten- 
dency. The seer of to-morrow may contradict the seer of 
to-day. So it was in the past ; so it will continue to be. 
How many volumes have we had professing to give supple- 
mentary lives of Jesus and the apostles, through medial 
impression or from the communications of spirits ! And 
each new volume contradicts its predecessors. I have 
before me a work in French, dated as far back as 1866, and 
sent me by the estimable author. It is in three large vol- 
umes, and is entitled " Spiritisme Chretien on Revelation de 
la Revelation;" and further: "The Four Gospels, fol- 
lowed by the Commandments, explained in spirit and in 



:-r- SCUJDDS - HEFLECTI 

truth by tht E vangelists assisted by the Apostles and by 
Hoses received and arranged bj J. B. Roustaing, advo- 
eate al _ Imperia] I :>nrt of Bordeaux." It is ably and 
dearly written, in the interest of the Kardec doctrine of 
:r.i:irnation. 

B rison cannot assent to such unverified pretensions. 
The moment we go one step beyond facts and their legiti- 
ruo:o :::'r:ri;^. ~oother they come to ns affirmed by 
spirit, aeer, :r medium, we are all adrift without a com- 
pasE 1 h : : e is snc : _o : : the wonderful in the demonstra- 
ble phenomena without oo_.:u.__ :o S;:u:oi~:sol. o::t i: 
and uniTersal, the idiosyncrasies of individuals, whether in 
toe uuse^u u u. j± in this. 

Stuotualisuj is simply too science of continuous life: of 
llfi :i — li:h :o- :o :oo ullol. V "" is :-. u:e: = su-rlliou 
of flie on:- 1 : eoi slope. Toe early Christians showed by 
their constant adoption of the butterfly as the emblem of 
thou itu in immortality, that the old illustration of the 
in sans - u ressed their notion as well as it does that of 
modern Spiritualists : this, namely, that the psychical or- 
ganism is involved in to e physical This science is 1 
on facts that folly justify the spiritual hypothesis, and is 
warranted by a course of reasoning both inductive and 
oioio Xloos S ouitualism has a vital advantage over 
all those historical or traditional beliefs whose tendency it 
is I : riiuir weakened by time. ^Thy is it that modern 
o : - : e in the facts related in the Bible, 



_ •. j .- . 



:-".tOu: lis :: tioot: o::oo -_.o:: :': its 0.000..0 
y souse 1: thr uiis: -tninent physicists of the present 
laj • it is I ocanse all faith in the spiritual and the preter- 
human has died out. On many minds the only hold which 
! _-. o-ui oi:~ now has is in the excellence of its ethical 

Mi - ~ een- one of the most careful writers on the 
say s he does l : t 1 : : k t S t iritualism for any iuflu- 



THE GREAT GENERALIZATION. 345 

ence upon morality or religion from the revelation of any 
new and startling truths. He looks rather to the increased 
vitality of the belief in a future life ; to the consequent 
widening and enlarging of our ideal of happiness, which 
he regards as the actual basis of all morality. The knowl- 
edge of our immortality must add an incentive for us to 
seek out for ourselves the true path. We must not look to 
advanced spirits for any infallible code. Religion is not a 
belief in certain dogmas. In the divine laws of our being 
we must find the moral law and the religious impulse. 
Thus science, and not dogma, must rule ; since morality is 
the art of conforming our lives to the highest law expressed 
in our own nature, human and spiritual, mortal and im- 
mortal ; while religion is the reverent sense of a power 
superior to our own, and able to affect our destiny. 

The existence of beings in ethereal bodies, invisible to 
our imperfect senses, is an hypothesis which the latest dis- 
coveries in science make not only possible, but probable. 
It has been proved that all the great forces of nature are 
accompanied with vibrations of a form of matter so subtile 
that our purest atmosphere is dense matter compared with 
it. Only by their effects do these impalpable grades of 
matter become known to us ; but these effects show that 
power is increased the less gross the matter becomes. Let 
the proof be given that intelligent beings, exerting a pre- 
terhuman power over matter, manifest their existence by 
their acts (as they have done) , and there is no good reason 
why the man of real science should refuse to give the evi- 
dence its proper weight. 

Even in dark circles the electric rapidity with which cer- 
tain phenomena are produced is a sufficient proof of their 
preterhuman character. I have been present repeatedly at 
seances where a tambourine was moved from the table to 
the floor, and from the floor to the table, with such vio- 
lence and inconceivable celerity, that no one could doubt 



346 



CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 



that the foroe exerted was not that of a mortal. The con- 
ditions were perfect, as security against fraud ; the move- 
meDt, even in the light, would have been impossible ; but 
occurriug in utter darkness, and never causing the instru- 
ment to touch one of the dozen hands placed outstretched 
on the table, it showed that an abnormal power was at work, 
to which darkness was no obstacle, and which could effect 
the transfer with a velocity aud precision wholly inconceiv- 
able 'unless done by faculties transcending the human. 

The Pantheistic idea of the absorption of finite individ- 
ualities in the life of the Infinite — even as brooks and 
rivers get their drops from the ocean, and return them to 
it — finds no analogj T in the facts of Spiritualism, which 
teaches distinctly the imperishability of the individual and 
the continuation of the identical Ego. R. W. Emerson, 
in his pathetic poem on the decease of his little boj T , ex- 
presses the Pantheistic conception in the following couplet : 




" The master, Death, with sovereign rite, 
Pours finite into infinite." 

The theory is that the Infinite Mind keeps individual- 
izing his exuberant life in organisms, but does his work so 
blindly that "the master, Death," keeps undoing what 
God has done, and reducing the life-process to an object- 
less pouring out and pouring back of the same essence. 
To which fantasy, Spiritualism replies : God, and not 
Death, is the master ; and God has done his work with 
such unerring wisdom that a superior organism for man 
(and perhaps for the lower animals) is involved in the 
physical, and is alwa} T s read}' to take its place. God is 
not the absorber of human individualities, but the gracious, 
all-powerful One who eternally expands his own life in im- 
parting it to subordinate beings ; eternally enriches his 
own love by giving, and in seeing it reflected, as the sun 
is in the dewdrop, in the progressive happiness, wisdom, 



THE GREAT GENERALIZATION. 347 

and love of his dependent creatures, and in the develop- 
ment of their as yet rudimental free will. 

And yet Pantheism is true, though but a part of the 
truth. If man is the image of his Maker, if the finite is 
patterned after the Infinite, then the deductions from our 
facts justify the conception that the nature-element of 
Deity maj^ in its consciousness be discrete from the om- 
niscient consciousness of God in the Highest. Immanent 
in the universe, he ma}' there differ in degree from what he 
is in that transcendent state in which he is above and be- 
3'ond nature ; — is the One and only Possibility b}' which 
all things have become possible and existent. Thus Pan- 
theism is viewed as the inner circle of a grander Theism, 
and two ever-conflicting beliefs are found as harmonious as 
the convex and concave of the same crescent. 

We may exist in the midst of a world of spirits just as 
we do in the midst of that world which was unknown to 
man till it was revealed by the microscope. Spiritualism 
assures us that this is not only a possibility but a reality. 
The universe penetrable to our senses nurv be but a frac- 
tion of that Infinite Whole patent to Omnipotence. Sir 
W. R. Grove, in his "Correlation of Physical Forces," 
remarks: "In very man} T of the forms which matter 
assumes, it is porous, and pervaded by more volatile 
essences, which ma} T differ as much in kind as matter 
does." Sir Humphrey Davy Irypothecates an "ethereal 
matter which can never be evident to the senses, and may 
bear the same relations to heat, light, and electricity that 
these refined forms or modes of existence of matter may 
bear to the gases." 

I have but a word to say to that small class of would-be 
philosophers who, admitting our phenomena, would get rid 
of them by a " What of it ? What do they prove ? " 

There are certain fundamental convictions of the human 
mind which are manifestly undemonstrable ; and it is an 



348 



CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 



easy matter for the extreme skeptic to question their truth. 
But such questioning, because of the lack of formal dem- 
onstration, is not alwaj^s defensible on philosophical 
grounds. If the ultimate axioms, where reason compels 
us to make a stand, are rejected, it is useless to attempt to 
reason further.* 

At every step in life we are obliged to recognize a power 
external to phenomena. Without this recognition we could 
not regard the world as external, for, strictly speaking, its 
phenomena are effects on us, and subjective. The recog- 
nition of what is outside us in space, and distant in time, 
depends, then, on the acceptance by reason of what trans- 
cends phenomena. 

Season may admit that her conceptions of such realities 
ma}^ be, must be, imperfect ; but she will judge also that 
her conceptions, recognized as imperfect, are nearer the 
truth than the decision to reject all conceptions of the kind 
would be, since that would land us in extreme idealism. 

Science has to transcend phenomena at every step ; the 
whole fabric of human knowledge would collapse unless 
the testimony of consciousness was accepted to facts not 
found among phenomena, but inferred from them. 

We all believe that the human beings around us .are ani- 
mated with conscious intelligence. Yet physical evidence 
of this there is none. Like our conviction of the past and 
of our own continued existence, it is an inference drawn 
from phenomena respecting what transcends phenomena ; 
yet it commands the entire assent of reason, and hence 
takes rank among our fundamental beliefs. 

All these considerations are ignored in the skeptical as- 
sumption that the reappearance of the form of a deceased 
friend, conversing intelligibly, manifesting recognizable 
traits both physical and mental, giving proofs of identity 



* In carrying out this argument I am largely indebted to the late Thomas 
Martin Herbert's masterly work, " The Realistic Assumptions of Modern Sci- 
ence Examined." London : Macmillan & Co. 1879. 



THE GREAT GENERALIZATION. 349 

in a knowledge of the past, in affection for kindred, and in 
other indescribable peculiarities appreciable only by the 
spectator who has known and loved him, — that all this is 
no evidence of the reappearance of that deceased person. 

For such a phenomenon there is a cause, and reason 
must obviously transcend phenomena in order to arrive at 
that cause. The question whether the cause may not be 
mundane rather than super-mundane is purely sophistical, 
and has nothing to do with the vital fact of the trans-mortal 
survival. The skeptic's position, if tenable, would be 
equally fatal to all scientific progress by questioning the 
ultimate grounds, the primary, undemonstrable convictions, 
on which all science is based. 

One of our evangelical assailants tells us that " it is the 
mistake of the Spiritualist that he makes a religion of what 
should be a science." Are we then to understand that to 
know is less a warranty for religious feeling and hope than 
to believe, or rather to try to believe? 

It is for the very reason that Spiritualism has a Scientific 
Basis in known and demonstrable facts, that it offers the 
surest ground for religion. It shows us that the only 
hurtful heresy is the wrong thinking that leads to wrong- 
doing. It proves to us that as we sow we shall reap. 

Some persons, in whom the religious or devotional in- 
stinct may be yet feeble or undeveloped, may long remain 
untouched by the vast religious significance of a knowledge 
of immortality ; but in times of bereavement and great 
affliction it may rush back to the heart with a divine, 
awakening meaning and force ; and sorrow may reveal to 
us that the certainty of a reunion with our beloved has in 
it, for the heart that is not petrified, the highest and purest 
religious element, since it must give rise to the profoundest 
gratitude to the Infinite Giver of life and love. 



I GRANT that of the facts here affirmed to be real, many are very strange , 
uncouth, and improbable ; and that we cannot understand them or reconcile 
them with the commonly received notions of spirits and the future state. 

I allow that there are many over-credulous persons; and that frauds, 
impostures, and delusions have been mixed up and confounded with real 
facts in Spiritualism. 

I grant that melancholy and imagination have very great force, and beget 
strange persuasions ; and that many stories of apparitions have been but 
melancholy fancies. 

I know and yield that there are many strange, natural diseases that have 
odd symptoms, and produce astonishing effects beyond the usual course of 
nature; and that these are sometimes quoted as explaining preternatural 
facts. 



i^twlata 



Having made these concessions, the postulata which I demand of my 
adversaries as my just right are : 

That whether our phenomena occur or not is a question of fact, and not 
of a priori reasoning. 

That matters of fact can only be proved by immediate sense, or by the 
testimony of others. To endeavor to demonstrate fact by abstract reason- 
ing or speculation is as if a man should attempt to prove by algebra or meta- 
physics that Julius Caesar founded the empire of Rome. 

A certain amount and character of human testimony cannot be reasonably 
rejected as incredible, or as supporting facts contrary to nature, since all 
facts within the realm of nature must be natural. 

That which is sufficiently and undeniably proved ought not to be denied 
because we know not how it can be ; that is, because there are difficulties 
in the conceiving of it; otherwise sense and knowledge are gone as well as 
faith. For the modus of most things is unknown, and the most obvious in 
nature have inextricable difficulties in the conceiving of them. 

Altered from Rev. Joseph Glanvel (1636-1680). 

350 



APPENDIX 



"A Scientific Basis of Belief " 

The Rev. John Page Hopps, an English liberal preacher, is the 
author of a little pamphlet entitled "A Scientific Basis of Belief in a 
Future Life ; or the Witness borne by Modern Science to the Reality 
and Pre-eminence of the Unseen Universe." As he pursues a some- 
what different method from my own, but arrives at similar results, an 
outline or abridgment of his excellent brochure may be here appro- 
priate. It should be premised that he has satisfied himself of the fact 
of direct writing and other spiritual phenomena, though he does not 
refer to them here. 

If faith in God or Immortality depends on the conviction of the 
infallibility of the Bible, faith is already doomed. The marvellous 
spread of scientific knowledge has led to a totally new demand for 
evidence and demonstration as the antecedent to all belief. 

The inquiry into a future life or an unseen universe is a strictly 
scientific one. But all the science we can attain to is relative to our 
limited capacities. The first thing to do is to take the whole subject 
out of the realm of mystery, unreality, fantasy, and awe, and make 
it the object of cool thought and, if possible, of scientific experiment. 
We have too long been accustomed to speak of the dead in a vague, 
dreamy, unreal way. A future life can only mean the actual going 
on of the human being in spite of the incident called " death." 

The science of the present day, in hypothecating atoms as the ulti- 
mate constituents of matter, confesses that it does not know what an 
atom is. Even in relation to the world of sense, it is confessedly true 
that the ideal world, or world of consciousness, is immeasurably 
more vital than what is usually called the world of matter. Huxley 
himself affirms that the inner world of consciousness is the only one 
we know at first hand, — that the external world is only an inference 
from our sensations. 

The illustration requires a little close thought. We hear the sound 
of a bell, but, in the exciting cause, there is nothing like the sound 
of a bell. Certain waves of air — in themselves only forms of mo- 
tion — produce in us as sound, something wholly different from what 
they themselves are. We are not conscious of the waves of air, but 
only of the effect produced on us. This will show what science 
means when it says that we are more directly certain of states of con- 
sciousness than of states of matter. 351 



352 



APPENDIX. 



In ordinary sleep, the fields through which you wander, the money 
you handle, the fruit you eat, the trees you see swayed hy the wind, 
the people you meet, the ocean whose bright waves break on the 
shore, are all perfectly real to you in dreams ; and you think they 
are real for the time : so true is it that consciousness, thought, and 
sensation are more immediately real to us than matter. 

"Experience," says John Stuart Mill, "furnishes us with no exam- 
ple of any series of states of consciousness " without " a material 
brain ; but it is as easy to imagine such a series of states without as 
with this accompaniment, and we know of no reason in the nature of 
things against the possibility of its being thus disjoined." He even 
says, " We may suppose that the same thoughts, emotions, volitions, 
and even sensations which we have here, may persist or recommence 
somewhere else under other conditions." This is all we ask, and 
this is perfectly scientific. Sensation, thought, and consciousness, 
are all in ourselves, and are absolutely unlike matter in all their 
peculiarities. In our present state they may be excited by certain 
conditions of matter, but this is no argument against the possibility 
of their existing independently of matter. 

There is talk of the conveyance of mental consciousness by " brain- 
waves." What does it matter how it is conveyed? The conscious- 
ness itself is not a wave. Truly it begins to look as though an eman- 
cipation and not a destruction might come with the separation of our 
mental powers from fleshly control. 

Our five senses do not measure the boundless reaches of being far, 
far beyond our ken. The greatest of all illusions is the common 
illusion that we see, hear, and touch all that might be visible, audi- 
ble, and tangible. What we call the solid globe itself is an assem- 
blage of atoms inconceivably small — so small that no eye can see, 
no instrument reveal them. What we call the vacant air is filled 
with light, and sound, and subtlest flashing forces, flooding every 
tiniest space with music and beauty, and ever flowing energy. It 
would only require a readjustment of our senses to make these a new 
heaven and a new earth to us. 

Huxley says that "Astronomy demonstrates that what we call the 
peaceful heavens above us is but space, filled by an infinitely subtile 
matter whose particles are seething and surging, like the waves of an 
angry sea." And yet that " subtile matter " is so rare and delicate 
that the rarest known gas is as mud in comparison with it. The 
difference between a gas and a so-called solid substance is only the 
difference of atoms more or less close together, linked by some cen- 
tral unseen force. 

Thus it is now a well-known fact of science that multitudes of so- 
called sounds, and objects of sight, and tangible objects, utterly 
elude us, simply because our senses are not fine enough to be recep- 
tive or explanatory as to them. 

There is nothing corresponding to sound in what produces it. Tyn- 
dall tells us that though a whole park of artillery were discharged, 
the only result would be a disturbance of the atmosphere, and not 
sound at all unless an ear and a mind were present to catch the 
waves of motion and translate them into sound. 

The microphone proves the presence about us of "innumerable 



APPENDIX. 353 

waves of sound, so slight as to be inaudible to us. It reveals to the 
ear a new world, even as the microscope has opened a new world to 
the eye. Thus our external senses are constructed to perceive only 
an infinitesimal portion of the sights and sounds about us. So it is 
a mere a priori judgment, mere folly and presumption, to pronounce 
of anything that it cannot be." 

What Tyndall calls the " luminiferous ether " may be only what we 
know as atmosphere in a more subtile state, but it is so attenuated 
and elastic that it can convey the vibrations answering to light at a 
rate of about 200,000 miles a second. Compared with that, we, in 
our ordinary atmosphere, may be said to be living in thick mud. 
What a suggestion have we here as to an unseen universe, ay, and 
as to exquisitely subtile beings living in it their refined and happy 
lives ! Thus it is the admission of the most advanced science that 
objects and even organized beings may exist in an unseen universe. 

The other senses lead, in like manner, into the Unseen. The 
gases are as truly matter as the solid metals ; and hydrogen is as much 
a substance as iron : and yet the one is solid to our touch, and the 
other is as nothing to that sense : and the gas can readily pass 
through the metal (just as a spirit may pass through a solid wall). 
It is only habit and the limitation of our sense of touch that lead us 
to think of matter in a certain subtile condition as less real than 
denser substances. A hand that could pass through granite is scien- 
tifically conceivable. Thus there is nothing in a spirit-hand that vio- 
lates a purely scientific conception. 

So again with the sense of odor. Odor does not exist, as such, till 
the vibrating particles that produce it reach and affect the nerves 
and brain. " Sensations," says Huxley, " are, in the strictest sense, 
immaterial entities.' 1 '' Thus even now and here we belong to the 
Unseen. 

"We must resort to the unseen," say Stewart and Tait, " not only 
for the origin of the molecules of the visible universe, but also for an 
explanation of the forces which animate these molecules. So that 
we are compelled to conclude that every motion of the visible uni- 
verse is caused by the unseen, and that its energy is ultimately car- 
ried again into the unseen." Is not this wonderfully suggestive? 
What if the intelligence, the personality, that are here grown and 
developed, pass into the unseen with their glorious gains ? 

Everywhere is the visible produced by the invisible. All the glory 
of leaf and flower, whence conies it? Every tint of color and essence 
of odor existed first in the Unseen. And what is true for us and our 
tiny globe we may reasonably conclude is true in the vast universe 
beyond. 

Thus we arrive by the steps of admitted science at the stupendous 
conclusion that the Unseen is at once the source, receptacle, and 
laboratory of energy and vitality immeasurably surpassing anything 
within the present experience of man. 

But thought itself is a greater mystery than the existence of all 
these finer forms. The materialist has here a harder problem to 
solve than any other connected with an unseen universe. " We are 
absolutely driven," say Stewart and Tait, "by scientific principles 
to acknowledge the existence of an unseen universe, and to conclude 
23 



354 



APPENDIX. 



that it is full of life and intelligence — that it is in fact a spiritual 
universe and not a dead one." 

"With every advance in organization there is a corresponding ad- 
vance in mind. The inference, the longer we ponder it, becomes the 
more inevitable, that Life and Thought, no less than Matter, though 
they may know vast changes and pass into higher or more subtile 
forms of being, are destined to find their home in the vast Unseen. 
Thus taking the universe as it is, and adopting the principle of con- 
tinuity, the process leads us at once to the conception of an invisible 
universe, and to see that immortality is possible without a break of 
continuity. 

We have then strictly scientific grounds (apart from the sufficient 
proofs given in Spiritualism) that even now the psychical part of man 
is developing powers that will enable it to survive the dissolution of 
the merely physical structure. 

The great laws of evolution, continuity, and the conservation of 
force combine to justify the inference that if matter persists after its 
dissolution in one form, reappearing in another, so too will mind, 
which, though ending its connection with matter as we know it, may 
reappear under conditions immeasurably more favorable to its devel- 
opment and delight. 

We have to follow matter into the ethereal regions of its more sub- 
tile modes of existence ; and shall we not follow mind also into those 
unseen regions, especially when we see that matter everywhere 
seems to be manipulated and directed by mind? 

Imagine the life-principle united to a spiritual body as subtile and 
exquisite as itself, and having its sphere of activity in a world per- 
fectly adapted to its own sensitive, ethereal form of existence ; — 
surely you would there have everything that could give the most 
thrilling realization of life, with all its possibilities of progress and 
of joy. 

Ulrici describes the soul of man from a scientific point of view as 
a refined, continuous, subtile substance, permeating the whole ma- 
terial structure of the body, and attaining to the grade of spiritual 
being because it has attained to the grade of conscious and intelligent 
existence. It is then this spirit-body which goes out from the physi- 
cal body at death ; for death is an orderly stage in a natural pro- 
cess, and only dissolves that which is outermost, in order that the 
real man may take the next great step in the ceaseless march of pro- 
gressive being. 

The view here taken of the Future Life makes us largely the de- 
terminers of what that life shall be to us. It leaves us alone with 
personal character, and with that great law of all life, " Whatsoever 
a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 



Over-hasty Charges of Fraud. — (See page 18.) 

When Miss Wood, the well-known materializing medium of New- 
castle, England, visited Macclesfield in 1877, she was denounced by 
one of the sitters as guilty of a fraud. The Advertiser of that place 



APPENDIX. 355 



defended her position at that time, and it now states, in its issue of 
August 28 (1880), that the gentleman who made the attack called 
upon the editor a short time since and acknowledged that he was in 
error, saying he would make a confession to that effect to Miss 
Wood whenever he might have the pleasure of meeting her. Many- 
other charges of fraud,' brought without proper discrimination, have 
had a similar issue. 



Direct Writing. — (See page 35.) 

Almost daily, while revising this work for the press, new testi- 
mony has come to me, justifying my adoption of the two great facts 
of direct writing and clairvoyance as typical proofs of the funda- 
mental truth of Spiritualism, and presenting a truly scientific basis. 

Mr. G. B. Stehbins, of Detroit, Mich., author of "After Dogmatic 
Theology — What?" (1880,) and other much esteemed works, — a 
gentleman most favorably known to me personally, — was present at 
a new and interesting manifestation of pneumatography, or spirit- 
writing, at the camp-meeting at Cassadaga Lake, N. Y., August 21, 
1880. The medium was Mr. R. W. Saur, of Titus ville, Pa., a Ger- 
man some thirty years of age, and, according to Mr. Stebbins, " an 
intelligent, sincere, an J devoted man." Mr. Stebbins's testimony is 
published in the Religio- Philosophical Journal of Sept. 4, 1880. 
He and Mr. O. P. Kellogg saw two clean slates tied together. The 
medium, apparently "under a strong influence," satin a chair be- 
fore an audience of two hundred persons. He held the slates on the 
outspread fingers of his extended hand, while Messrs. Stebbins, 
Kellogg, and several other witnesses stood by, "hearing distinctly 
the scratching of the bit of pencil inside, as it rapidly traced the let- 
ters, — the dotting and strokes being easily heard." 

The slates were turned over by the medium's hand as one side 
seemed full, and then the pencil moved rapidly on, and he soon 
handed the slates to Mr. Kellogg, but took them back, saying (prob- 
ably under influence of the communicating spirit), " I will write the 
name." Mr. Stebbins says : " We heard the pencil again a moment, 
and then opened the slates to find the following message clearly 
written. I copy it exactly, punctuation and all : 

" Friends of Progress : I am glad to be here, and much pleased to write 
this. I thought it was a good opportunity for this large assemblage to prove 
what has often been done, the immortality of the soul. Now I well know that 
some will dispute this fact, but what if they do ? I know the world is still 
quite full of these, on this point, respectable ignoramuses. I will close by 
stating one fact. Friends, depend on my veracity. I tell you most emphat- 
ical. the Spirit-world is peopled from our world, and they cannot depend upon 
another man's light for their salvation. They must not only believe and know 
for themselves, but they must do the work for themselves. Do right, be true 
and good, that is what counts. Truly yours, H. H. Rouse." 

The rest of Mr. Stebbins's testimony is as follows : 
"I at once read this to the audience, and Mr. Kellogg said to me, 
' A Mr. Rouse, from Titusville, whom I knew well, the chief of po- 
lice in that city, and the brother of this H. H. Rouse, who left the 



356 



APPENDIX. 



earth some few years ago, is here. I will find him.' He found him 
near the door where he had been standing, showed him the slate-writ- 
ing, and he at once said, with tears in his eyes, ' That is from my 
brother,' and took from his packet a letter, the last he had from that 
brother, not long before his death, compared, the writing, and found 
that on the slates a good facsimile, the signature being especially 
perfect. He loaned us the letter, and on careful examination I call 
the slate-writing an excellent fac~simile." 

To this, Dr. A. B. Spinney adds, under date of August 22, 1880, 
"I heartily indorse the above statement, as I have seen the slate- 
writing and the letter, and they " (in their chirography) " are exactly 
alike." 

Mr. E. A. Chapman, of Lowell, Mich., writes (July 26, 1880): 
"Henry Slade now gets the direct writing while the two slates hang 
suspended from a gas-jet. He allows any one to bring his or her 
slates, or to select from a pile of his own, tie and suspend them 
from the gas-jet, take them down, untie and read them — he never 
touching the slate at all ; or he will permit the slates to be held in the 
hands of the sitters, the writing coming or being produced under 
those conditions — he not touching the slates — the scratching of the 
pencil inside invariably being heard, and corresponding to the 
message." 

Since there is nothing " so brutally conclusive as a fact," how long 
do Messieurs the "scientists" expect to make a stand against facts 
like these? 



Guldenstubbe and Direct Writing. — (See page 46.) 

In the Paris Revue Spirite for July, 1880, is an interesting account 
from the pen of M. Leymarie of a visit to Versailles, made by Baron 
Guldenstubbe, by order of the spirits. He was required to go with 
certain ladies named, whom he was to invite, and evidently for a 
special purpose. While in the gallery at Versailles the Bishop of 
Orleans, M. Dupanloup, passed on his way to celebrate Mass in the 
chapel. Knowing the ladies referred to above he stopped and ad- 
dressed them, and also the Baron, to whom he expressed his regrets 
that he adhered to a strange faith and one hostile to the Church; that 
he was a follower in fact of Luther, who would suffer in purgatory 
for the division he had caused in said church. 

The Baron replied that he did not think that Luther was in purga- 
tory or in hell, and that as a proof of it, if the Bishop would place 
a blank piece of paper on Luther's portrait, there would come some 
evidence of his (the Baron's) belief. The Bishop tore a piece of 
paper from his register and placed it as suggested. After a few mo- 
ments he took it down and found written upon it : 

" In vita pestis eram Papse, 
la morte mors ero. — Luther." 



(" Living I was a pest to the Pope ; dead, I will be his death.") They 
were all greatly astonished. The Bishop extended his hand to the 



APPENDIX. 357 

Baron and his sisters (both mediums), asking permission to visit 
them in Paris. The permission was obtained, and he frequently 
availed himself of it subsequently. 

Robert Dale Owen testified that he accompanied the Baron and his 
sister Julia to various chapels in Paris ; that he (Owen) laid down 
sheets of his own paper, without pencil or writing-materials ; that, 
retiring a few paces, but never losing sight of the paper, he found an 
intelligent message written upon it in every case. 

Professor W. Stainton-Moses tells us that for five years up to the 
year 1878, he had been familiar with the phenomenon of direct writ- 
ing. This had occurred both in the presence of recognized psychics 
known to the public, and of ladies and gentlemen in private, who 
possess the power and readily procure the result. " In the course of 
these observations," he says, "I have seen psychographs obtained 
in closed and locked boxes' as in the case of Baron Guldenstubbe; 
on paper previously marked and placed in a special position, from 
which it was not moved; on paper marked and put under the table, 
so as to get the assistance of darkness ; on paper on which my elbow 
rested, and on paper covered by my hand; on paper enclosed in a 
sealed envelope ; and on slates securely tied together." See " Psy- 
chography, by M. A. Oxon." Boston: Colby & Rich. 



Testimony of Dr. T. L. Nichols. — (See page 83.) 

Among the most experienced students of Spiritualism is Dr. T. L. 
Nichols, now of 32 Fopstone Road, Earl's Court, London, S. W., the 
author of several physiological works of great value. More than two 
years ago I received from him the following letter (now for the first 
time published), dated London, June 26, 1878, and written in reply 
to some inquiries of mine : 

"My mother was a Boston woman, my father came from Cohasset, 
and they went, during the Avar of 1812-14, to Orford, N. H., where 
I was born in 1815. I attended my first course of medical lectures at 
Dartmouth College, 1834, but drifted into journalism, and only com- 
pleted my course and took my diploma at the New York University 
in 1850. Since then I have been rather a medical writer and sanitary 
reformer than a medical practitioner. I knew you by sight when 
you had your office in Pulton Street, New York. Coming to England 
in 1861, 1 was for ten years a correspondent of the New York Times, 
and also, to some extent, a contributor to English periodical litera- 
ture. You will find my name in the list of contributors to Cham- 
bers's Encyclopsedia. My most important works in England, if I may 
use such a term in regard to any of them, are my ' Forty Years of 
American Life,' and ' Human Physiology the Basis of Sanitary and 
Social Science.' 

" I saw something of Spiritualism in America, and had in New 
York, and later in Ohio, the most positive and convincing evidence 
of the existence of spirits and the genuineness of what are called 
' spiritual manifestations.' 

"During the past year Mr. W. Eglinton, a young Englishman 



358 



APPENDIX. 



about twenty years old, and a very powerful physical medium, has 
been a member of my family. He first came to Malvern as a patient, 
and has been with us, in Malvern and London, ever since. I have 
had, I think, about fifty seances with him, attended in most cases 
only by members of my own family, and sometimes intimate friends. 
I have applied many tests, and satisfied myself, beyond all doubt, 
of the individuality of the spirits whom we have seen and felt, and 
talked with for many hours. 

" I have in my possession direct writings and drawings done un- 
der absolute test conditions by departed spirits with whose handwrit- 
ing I am familiar as with my own. I have an endless cord — that 
is, one I carefully tied and sealed — which, while my hand rested on 
the seal, had five knots tied in it. I have had the observation of 
matter passing through matter, in a chair being ' threaded ' upon the 
arm, while the hand firmly clasped another's hand, seven times — 
and tested the fact by tying the two wrists together with fine thread, 
and by myself holding the other hand. 

" The last materializations I have seen were a few days ago at 
Malvern, in my own garden in the summer twilight, when every ob- 
ject was distinctly visible. There was no cabinet. The medium, 
Mr. Eglinton, lay on a garden bench in plain sight. We saw the 
bodies of our visitors form themselves from a cloud of white 
vapor, and then walk about, robed all in purest white, upon the 
lawn where no deception was possible. One of them walked quite 
around us, as Ave sat in our chairs on the grass, talking as famil- 
iarly as any friend. Arthur Hildreth, son of the late Richard Hil- 
dreth, the historian, and his wife, sat beside me, while Mrs. Nichols 
sat on a stone balcony some twenty yards distant. This was all our 
party. 

" The ' sheeted ghost,' whose fine white draperywe had seen made 
from a white vapor before our eyes, came round behind me, took 
my hat from my head, put it on his own, and walked off with it to 
where the medium was lying ; then he came and put it on my head 
again ; then walked across the lawn and up a gravel walk to the foot 
of the balcony and talked with Mrs. Nichols. After a brief cdnver- 
sation he returned to the medium and gradually faded from sight. 

"I have known this ' ghost' for more than a year, and can have 
no possible doubt that he is what he strongly asserts himself to be, 
as distinct an individuality as I am myself. 

"1 have to say, then, that, with some pretensions to science, with 
the training in accurate observation of a practised journalist, and an 
experience of spiritualistic phenomena running through some twenty- 
five years, I cannot see that any facts are established by stronger proof 
than the existence of individual human spirits, who have been sepa- 
rated from their earthly bodies, but who have, under certain condi- 
tions, the power of giving us evidence of their existence by signs, 
writings, speech, and the assumption of visible and tangible bodily 
forms. 

" You are quite welcome to make any use of my testimony in this 
matter. I cannot make it too strong. The intelligence of the spirits 
with whom I have conversed is not dependent upon, or limited by, 
that of the medium, or of any one in the circle. They do things im- 



APPENDIX. 359 

possible to be done — tbey know tilings impossible to be known — 
by and to those to whom they come. 

" The theories of those who wish to banish spirits from Spiritual- 
ism may be ever so ingenious, but they do not meet the facts. I do 
not doubt your existence though I cannot identify your handwriting ; 
but I have several letters from a young lady who died in 18G4, the 
handwriting of which I can prove by many witnesses. 

" Wishing you every success in your good work, I remain, 
Faithfully yours, 

" T. L. Nichols, M.D." 

"Epes Sargent, Esq." 



The Witchcraft Excitement. — (See page 101.) 

Dr. W. B. Carpenter, in his work against Spiritualism, tells us 
that "in 1658 a woman was hung at Chard Assizes for having be- 
witched a boy twelve years old, who was seen to rise in the air and 
pass some thirty yards over a garden wall ; while at another time he 
was found in a room with his hands flat against a beam at the top, 
and his body two or three feet above the floor, — nine people at a 
time seeing him in this position." 

Is it not lamentable to see men of the present day, with scientific 
pretensions, trying to explain away a simple case of levitation, testi- 
fied to by nine sane witnesses, by the theory that the witnesses were 
"prepossessed," hallucinated, and made imbecile by their failure to 
cultivate "scientific habits of thought " ; that "they first surren- 
dered themselves, without due inquiry, to a disposition to believe in 
occult agencies ; and having so surrendered themselves, they inter- 
preted everything in accordance with that belief." 

And we are to accept this as explaining why nine persons in a case 
of life and death, testified to seeing what, according to the Carpen- 
terian superstition, they did not see and could not have seen ! 



Mocking Spirits. — (See page 103.) 

Among the fully authenticated spirit phenomena of the last thirty 
years, those which took place in the house of the Rev. Mr. 
Phelps, at Stratford, Conn., in 1851, were among the most remarka- 
ble. That some of them were by mocking or mischievous spirits is 
not improbable. Spirit-writing, without visible human agency, was 
among the early occurrences at Hydesville, Rochester, and Auburn ; 
and it was a common phenomenon at Stratford. Sometimes these 
spirit-writings would be enclosed in a book and thrown down ; some- 
times wrapped about a key or nail, or anything that would give a mo- 
mentum, and thrown into the room. Often they were seen to fall 
from above ; this occurring frequently when the doors were closed, 
and it was not possible for any visible agent to have been the cause. 
Writing would appear on the wall at times, made, as it appeared, with 
a pencil. On one occasion Dr. Phelps was writing at his desk, and, 



860 



APPENDIX. 



turning his back for a few moments, without leaving his chair, turned 
again to his paper, where he found written in large letters, "Very 
nice paper and very nice ink for the devil." The ink was not yet 
dry, the desk was not two feet from the Doctor as he sat, and he was 
certain that he was entirely alone in the room. Many mocking mes- 
sages were written ; some of them bearing hard on Dr. Phelps's Cal- 
vinistic views. He wrote me confirming these facts. 

Phantom Forms. — (See page 115.) 

"William Crookes, F.R.S., testifies that on one occasion, Mr. 
Home being the medium, "a phantom form came from the corner of 
the room, took an accordion in its hand, and then glided about the 
room, playing the instrument. The form was visible to all present 
for many minutes, Mr. Home also being seen at the same time. 
Coming rather close to a lady who was sitting apart from the rest of 
the company, she gave a slight cry, upon which it vanished." 



Testimony of Professional Conjurers. — (See p. 130.) 

Dr. W. B. Carpenter has often referred to professional conjurers 
as "trained experts ; " but when they go against his prepossessions 
their testimony is worthless in his estimation. I have instanced the 
names of several of these. Mr. T. A. Trollope informs us that an- 
other celebrated conjurer, Bosco, "utterly scouted the idea of such 
phenomena as were produced by Mr. Home being performed by any 
of the resources of the juggling art ; " and, lastly, Lord Rayleigh 
informed Mr. Wallace that he took a professional conjurer to Dr. 
Slade's, and that the phenomena happened with considerable perfec- 
tion, while " the conjurer could not form the remotest idea as to how 
the effects were produced." 

Jacobs, from whom I have quoted (p. 130), has written a letter to 
the Scientific Society for Psychological Studies at Paris, announcing 
his adhesion to the spiritual theory of the manifestations. 



Clairvoyance. — (See page 133.) 

" If ordinary vision were as rare as clairvoyance," says A. R. Wal- 
lace, " it would be just as difficult to prove its reality as it is now to 
establish the reality of this wonderful power. The evidence in its 
favor is absolutely conclusive to any one who will examine it, and 
who is not deluded by that most unphilosophical dogma that he 
knows a priori what is possible and what is impossible." 



Wallace and Darwin. — (See page 143.) 

Alfred R. Wallace, the distinguished naturalist, who shares with 
Darwin the honor of originating the theory of natural selection, gives 



APPENDIX. 361 

this brief definition of Darwinism : " It is the theory of the origin of 
the countless species of plants and animals from ancestral forms by 
means of natural selection." In a communication to that indefati- 
gable and eloquent proclaimer of the truths of Spiritualism, James M. 
Peebles, Mr. Wallace writes : " Darwinism may be true as far as it 
goes, but not be the whole truth. Darwin's laws of natural selection 
and variation are true laws, which will account for much — perhaps 
for all — the material organizations of plants and animals. He ad- 
mits an influx of life from the Creator at first. I think an influx of 
a higher life occurred when man appeared. He does not think this 
necessary. This is the real difference between us." The italics are 
those of Mr. Wallace himself. 



Identity of Spirits. — (See page 184.) 

My friend, Professor Wm. Stainton-Moses, of London, 'who to 
medial sensitiveness both as regards mental and physical phenomena 
unites high intellectual gifts and thorough collegiate culture, has 
studied carefully the subject of " Spirit Identity," and written an 
excellent little work on the subject, which I commend to those who 
still doubt whether there have been evidences of spirit- identity. On 
page 50 he says : "For a long time I failed in getting the evidence 
I wanted ; and if I had done as most investigators do, I should have 
abaiiv.oned the quest in despair or disgust. My state of mind was 
too positive; and I was forced, moreover, to take some personal 
pains before I obtained what I desired. Bit by bit, here a little and 
there i- little, by steps which I do not detail here, that evidence came, 
and as my mind opened to receive it, some six months were spent in 
persistent daily efforts to bring home to me proof of the perpetuated 
existence of human spirits, and of their power to communicate with 
me and give evidence of their unimpaired individuality, and of the 
unbroken continuity of their existence." 



Formation of the Spirit-Hand. — (See page 197.) 

Dr. J. Garth Wilkinson, of London, well known as an eminent 
physician and the erudite translator of some of Swedenborg's writ- 
ings, once saw a spirit-hand at a circle of inquirers,- and requested 
that it might be laid on his forehead. He thus describes the result : 

" This was deliberately done, and I felt the thrilling impression as 
the palm was laid flat upon my brow, where it remained for several 
seconds. During the interval in which I felt it, I had abundant op- 
portunity of examining most closely the arm and fore-arm 

Bending over as I did to the vacant rim of the table, I saw how the 
arm terminated, — apparently in a graceful cascade of drapery ; much 
as though an arm was put through the peak of a snowy tent, the 
apex of which thus fell around the shoulder on every side. On leav- 
ing my forehead, the arm at once disappeared, and I watched it go. 
It was drawn into the same drapery, but so naively that I can only 



362 



APPENDIX. 



liken it to a fountain falling down again, and ceasing into the bosom 
of the water from which it rose." 

Eugene Nus, author of " Choses de V autre Monde" (Paris, 1880), 
testifies to having seen a luminous hand lift a musical box from a 
table, carry it about the room and up to the ceiling, and then place 
it under a bed. The same thing happened with a bell, which was 
agitated in the air, carried rapidly to the extremities of the room, and 
then at his request brought and deposited in his own hand. The light 
was so subdued as to make the luminosity of the phantom-hand ap- 
parent. 



Spirit- Photography . — (See page 204.) 

In reference to the possibility of photographing the forms pre- 
sented by spirits, Mr. A. R. Wallace remarks: "We are in a posi- 
tion to state, not only that it has been frequently done, but that the 
evidence is of such a nature as to satisfy any one who will take the 
trouble carefully to examine it." After presenting this evidence, he 
adds: "We find, then, that three amateur photographers, working 
independently in different parts of England, separately confirm the 
fact of spirit-photography — already demonstrated to the satisfaction 
of many who had tested it through professional photographers. The 
experiments of Mr. Beattie and Dr. Thomson are alone absolutely 
conclusive ; and, taken in connection with those of Mr. Slater and 
Dr. Williams, and the test photographs, like those of Mrs. Guppy, 
establish as a scientific fact the objective existence of invisible hu- 
man forms, and definite, invisible, actinic images." 

Referring to the series of other physical phenomena, Mr. Wallace' 
says : "They form a connected body of evidence, from the simplest 
to the most complex and astounding, every single component fact 
of which can be and has been repeatedly demonstrated by itself; 
while each gives weight and confirmation to all the rest. They have 
all, or nearly all, been before the world for twenty (thirty- three) 
years ; the theories and explanations of reviewers and critics do not 
touch them, or in any way satisfy any sane man who has repeatedly 
witnessed them." 

"My position, therefore, is, that the phenomena of Spiritualism in 
their entirety do not require further confirmation. They are proved 
quite as well as any facts are proved in other sciences; and it is not 
denial or quibbling that can disprove any of them, but only fresh 
facts and accurate deductions from those facts." If all this was true 
in 1874, what an amount of evidence in confirmation has accumu- 
lated up to the year 1880 ! 




Robert H. Collyer, M.I). — (See page 215.) 

The Dr. Collyer here referred to published in London, in 1876, a 
pamphlet entitled "Automatic Writing; the Slade Prosecution; 
Vindication of the Truth;" in which he writes: "Mr. Slade has 



APPENDIX. 363 

presented to myself phenomena which are not susceptible of any 
explanation based on trickery or fraud. Being thoroughly convinced 
that the phenomena are genuine, I should be alike untrue to my own 
sense of independence, truth, and honor, if I did not vindicate his 
honesty of purpose." As Dr. Colly er was not a Spiritualist, this 
testimony may carry all the more weight with the skeptical. 



Phenomena through Mrs. Mowatt. — (See page 224.) 

In the account of the phenomena through Mrs. Mowatt, want of 
space compelled me to omit many facts of interest. Having, under 
her own prescriptions while somnambulic, been restored to a state of 
vigorous health, she went upon the stage to retrieve the pecuniary 
fortunes of her husband. The late Edward L. Davenport, the 
American actor, whom I had known from my youth up, became ac- 
quainted with her professionally, and when Mr. and Mrs. Mowatt 
were going to try their fortunes in England, he accompanied them. 
Before their departure I imparted to him, by the direction of Mrs. 
Mowatt in her somnambulic state, all the information that would 
enable him to induce somnambulism in her in case she should fall 
ill. He also had several interviews with the " gypsy," as she called 
her higher self, before they sailed. Early in my mesmeric experi- 
ences with her a puzzle arose which I thus expressed to her while 
somnambulic: "You always speak of your lower self in the third 
person, and you never speak of your present self in the first, and 
you object to being addressed by either your Christian or surname. 
How shall I call you?" "Call me gypsy," she replied. "Then I 
suppose we must give a corresponding name to your waking self. 
Since she does many things that you disapprove of, suppose we call 
her simpleton ? " At this she clapped her hands in glee, and said, 
" Nothing could be more apt." So the distinctions were adopted, 
and the two names were ever afterward seriously used, though not 
when she was in her normal state. 

In the Chicago Inter- Ocean for January, 1880, appears an account 
by an "interviewer" of the information imparted by the widoAv of 
my old friend Davenport in regard to the mesmerization of Mrs. 
Mowatt in London. Mr. Mowatt had been ordered to Jamaica by 
his physician, and had requested Mr. and Mrs. Davenport to go and 
occupy his rooms, that Mrs. Mowatt might have the benefit of their 
care. Mrs. Mowatt fell ill, and was made somnambulic that she 
might prescribe for herself. The following is Mrs. Davenport's 
account of what occurred : — 

" Throughout she called herself ' Gypsy.' She referred to her 
former self as ' Simpleton,' or more frequently as ' Simpy,' and her 
voice acquired a peculiarly wide-awake tone. She never opened her 
eyes, but could write equally well, and, by placing a sealed letter on 
her forehead, would reveal the contents. Of course this event, in 
spite of our efforts, became noised about, and attracted much com- 
ment, especially from the medical profession. 

" ' Did any eminent physicians visit her? ' 

" ' Yes ; it happened that during this time my daughter Fanny was 



364 



APPENDIX. 



born, and the well-known Dr. Westmacott, a nephew of the famous 
scslptor, was in attendance upon me. One day he jokingly inquired, 
' What is all this I hear about your clairvoyant patient? ' I told him 
the truth, and, of course, as he believed in nothing of the kind, he 
pooh-poohed. A little out of patience, I asked hirn if he would see 
her, and he promised to oh condition that I would not mention his 
name or possible call. A week or two afterward he came to vacci- 
nate Fanny, and after it was over I asked him to go up stairs with 
me. When he reached the upper hall, I motioned him to wait, and 
advanced to the door of the room ; but almost before I entered, Mrs. 
Mowatt called out, in her clear, bird-like voice, "Fanny dear, you 
can bring your doctor in with you." ' 

" I assure you we were both astonished. When he advanced to 
the bedside, she said, ' Oh, you do not believe ; you doubt ; but 
Gypsy will prove strange things to you.' Dr. Westmacott replied, 
pleasantly, 'No, you are right; I do not believe, but I am open to 
conviction ; but,' he concluded, laughing, ' it would be a sorry truth 
for a physician to find his patients able to take care of and pre- 
scribe for themselves, as they say you do.' 

"The doctor then seated himself, and began questioning her, 
when she interrupted him by crying out eagerly, as a child might, 
'Ah, doctor, you have something in your coat-pocket for me ; give it 
to me quickly. I want to see it.' The doctor looked disconcerted 
for a moment, but replied, 'You are quite right; I have a package 
for you, and if, without opening your eyes or the package, you can 
tell me what it contains, 1 will believe, at least, that you are not 
humbugging us all.' 

" So saying, he drew from his coat-pocket a flat package, heavily 
wrapped in thick, brown paper, securely tied and sealed with wax. 
Without hesitating, Mrs. Mowatt, her fair face shining with intelli- 
gence, took hold of the package and placed it against her forehead. 
In a moment she exclaimed, ' O what a strange old man ! he looks 
like a Jew, and leans heavily on his stick. He is very old ; his hair 
and beard are white «— ' 

" ' That will do,' said Dr. Westmacott, who had actually changed 
color, and he tore open the package, disclosing a photograph of Ku- 
bens's famous painting of ' The Jew.' He then subjected her to a 
number of other tests, with the same result, and when he left said 
that while he could not propagate such a doctrine, he could never 
ridicule it in the future as he had in the past." 



The Money Test. — (See page 232.) 

I have before me a little pamphlet entitled " Spiritualism and 
Charlatanism, or the Tricks of the Media, embodying an Expose of 
the Manifestations of Modern Spiritualism by a Committee of Busi- 
ness Men of New York." The committee do not add much to our 
stock of knowledge, but I find here a pithy and interesting letter 
from Henry Slade, in reply to their proposition to donate five hundred 
dollars to any charitable institution if he would give them proofs of 






APPENDIX. 365 



direct writing. Under date of New York, March 18, 1873, he re- 
marks : 

"Your proposition does not come within the province of anything 
I might claim in regard to the manifestation of writing that has re- 
peatedly occurred in my presence. Therefore I have no warrant or 
authority for accepting it: for obvious reasons. You propose that 
I shall write a line across a slate, or cause a pencil to write a line, 
without myself touching either slate or pencil. 

" My dear sirs, you would have been just as consistent to have 
made this proposition to your nearest neighbor as to me, — because I 
claim the writing that has so often occurred in my presence during a 
period of some years is a phenomenon over which I have no control 
whatever. Therefore I have no authority to say that it will occur 
again. . . . 

"It is not uncommon for me to sit with persons for these mani- 
festations and fail to obtain any. This is no disappointment to me. 
But when they do take place, my surprise can hardly be less than 
that of those who witness it for the first time. And were they never 
to occur again, it would be no evidence against the genuineness of 
those witnessed by thousands of intelligent men and women whose 
testimony would be taken as evidence in any court of justice upon 
any other question. 

" This, it seems, you are trying to overcome by declaring that you 
have failed to witness what others may have told you they have seen. 
If that is satisfactory to you it certainly is to me ; for I am fully 
aware that an acceptance or denial by one man, or any number of 
men, will make no difference with the facts. . . . The conditions 
you propose under the circumstances in this case would create that 
anxiety of mind with me that I could not for a moment expect the 
manifestation to occur." 



Swedenborgian Antagonism. — (See page 290.) 

Why is it that the Rev. Mr. Mercer and other orthodox Sweden- 
borgians are so opposed to the Spiritualism that is not adopted under 
their forms and restrictions? It is simply because our free Spiritual- 
ism conflicts with their own little barren system of ecclesiasticism ; 
a system entirely outside of all of Swedenborg's teachings, and 
originated by one Robert Hindmarsh, printer in London (1759-1885), 
who wanted a priesthood and a church. To him the so-called " New 
Jerusalem Church" owed its being; and it is his influence and teach- 
ings and not Swedenborg's that now rule in all these illiberal attacks 
on a free, philosophical, scientifically-based Spiritualism. 



Phenomena among Indians. — (See page 339.) 

See a letter from Chief Justice Larrabee, of Wisconsin, to the late 
Senator Tallmadge, of New York, giving evidence of the prevalence 



366 APPENDIX. 

of well-known spiritual phenomena among the North American In- 
dians. Clairvoyance, independent movements, and other strange 
manifestations are clearly proved. 

Seeing in The Shaker, a monthly publication issued at Shaker Vil- 
lage, N. H., a statement of phenomena among the Indians by Gran- 
ville T. Sproat, who as far back as 1S36 was a government agent 
under Gen. Cass among the Lake Superior Indians, I wrote Mr. 
Sproat and received from him (1876) a reply authenticating the facts. 
In the year 1836, Big Buffalo, the chief of the Ojibways on the south 
shore, lost his only son, and was terribly depressed thereby. But 
soon after he came to Mr. Sproat with form erect and a joyful aspect. 
"I have seen him," he exclaimed; " Onwi, my son, is still alive! 
Yesterday in the me-ta-wa (sacred dance) I saw him. We were in 
the great dancing-lodge ; and there Onwi came and joined in the 
dance. He spoke to us ; he said it was weakness for us to mourn for 
him. He had se3n our departed braves, and been welcomed by 
them. His step was light as a fawn's ; his face bright as the sky 
overhead. He smoked the pipe of peace with us. How did I know 
it was he? Did I not mark his form, his features, his every look? 
Was he not dressed in the very coat I gave him — a present from the 
great father at Washington ? How could I be deceived? Ask the 
aged men and they will tell you." 

" I did ask them," writes Mr. Sproat, "and heard from them the 
same report. It was the theme of conversation in every wigwam 
of the camp. The old men spoke of it in an undertone with their 
heads bowed as if in reverence ; and one day I heard Wah-chus-co, 
the great seer of the tribe, — taking a piece of birch-bark and draw- 
ing on it two spheres touching each other, — explain to his listeners 
that there were whole bands of joyous spirits passing from one sphere 
to the other, thus bringing together the inhabitants of the seen and 
unseen worlds." 



Fallibility of Spirits. — (See page 340.) 

" For our own part," says John Page Hopps, "we believe that 
these sensitive beings (mediums) have been en rapport with the un- 
seen world ; and we further believe that this accounts for and ex- 
plains nearly all the so-called ' revelations ' from the Most High ; but 
we also believe — and this is the point of urgent interest — that the 
spirit-influences that have made themselves felt have been as diverse 
in their character and influences as could possibly be, and that in 
many cases influences that might almost be called diabolical have 
been indorsed with a ' Thus saith the lord.' 

'■ Of course this suggests a grave danger, and we admit it; but it 
throws a flood of light on some of the gravest problems of ancient 
and modern times, and it is our surest safeguard against a danger, 
pernicious and perilous. Incursions from the spirit world have been 
a great fact in the history of the world in all ages ; and the delusion 
that every such incursion comes with a manifesto or revelation from 
the Almighty has been a curse in all ages." 



APPENDIX. 367 

Palpable Form- Manifestations. — (See page 341.) 

These manifestations have taken place among non-professional 
mediums, whose circumstances placed them above the need of being 
paid. A notable instance is that of Charles M. Tay, of Charlestown, 
Mass. (b. 1853, d. 1876). Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, one of the 
most gifted of the expounders of Spiritualism, says of him : "Music, 
poetry, and art formed the themes of his pure life and sinless aims. 
At length the buds of mediumship burst forth into radiant blossom, 
and Charles became the minister through whom the invisible opera- 
tors of another world were rendered palpable to their mortal friends, 
and messengers of the glad tidings of immortality. Raps, movements 
of furniture, writing, both inspirational and automatic, were freely 
given. At length faces were seen, forms were materialized, and 
spirits of those whose bodies ' lay mouldering in the grave,' came 
clothed in flesh and blood, walking, talking, and making merry with 
their, earth-loves once again. Exquisite music was made by spirits 
on various instruments. Flowers were brought and letters written 
by the hands of these invisibles. Whole sentences of advice, coun- 
sel, and instruction were spelled out in letters on the sensitive flesh. 
Every form of demonstration of the most powerful and convincing 
character was given freely, without money and without price. Pa- 
tient, gentle, resigned, true, and pure, Charles Tay passed from this 
sphere by rapid consumption; but moved about in the midst of his 
large and loving circle of friends to the last. In the closing hour 
of all, the initials of his departed father's name (Rufus L. Tay, the 
well-known purchaser in 1855 of the Webster Farm, at Franklin, N. 
H.) appeared on the young man's forehead, beneath the tender 
mother's hand, as she wiped away the dews of death " These stig- 
mata are a common phenomenon in Spiritualism; I have repeatedly 
witnessed them. 

Moses Dow, Esq., of Charlestown, Mass., the well-known propri- 
etor of the Waverley Magazine, testified in the Banner of Light, of 
March 22, 1873, without giving names, to the remarkable character 
of young Tay's free mediumship. At his seances recognizable forms 
appeared ; roses, fresh, moist and cool, as if just plucked, were pro- 
duced ; and spirit-voices, speaking intelligibly were distinctly heard. 
Mr. Dow, a man of large means, and of whose perfect probity and 
intelligence as an investigator no one can have a doubt, testifies most 
emphatically to the genuineness of the phenomena through young 
Tay, who readily submitted to the severest tests. 



The Proofs Accumulate. — (See page 357.) 

In the London Spiritualist I find further testimony from Dr. Ni- 
chols. He gives an account of remarkable pneumatographic phe- 
nomena that occurred in the light. Of the medium on the occasion 
he says (September, 1880) : "After a careful watch of three years 
I have never seen the slightest reason to doubt the absolute good 
faith and honesty of Mr. William Eglinton." A blank card was ex- 



368 



APPENDIX. 



arained, a corner torn off, and the card placed with a bit of pencil in 
a solid box, one owned by Dr. Nichols for many years. The box was 
closed and the hands of all present placed on the cover. Mr. Eg- 
linton said, " Ask for something to be written in any language you 
choose." Dr. Nichols said, " We have had Greek, Latin, and French ; 
let it be German." In a few moments, at a signal by raps, the box 
was opened, and on the card was found the following : 

'* Komm 1 wir wollen dir versprechen 
Rettung aus dem tiefsten Schwartz 
Pfeiler, Saulen kann man brecben, 
Aber nicbt ein festes Hertz." — Goethe. 

The next experiment was to throw all the blank cards into a corner 
of the room, and after them the pencil, the lead of which was now 
broken off within the wood. In a few minutes signal raps were 
heard. Dr. Nichols passed to the cards, and picking up one of them 
found written upon it, in an entirely different hand from those pre- 
viously received : 

" Mons. Hargrave : 

La bonne fortune, et la mauvaise, sont necessaires a Pliorame, pour le rendre 
habile; et eussi la patience est amere mais son fruit est doux." 

Below this was the word " renversez," and on turning the card 
over was found written on the other side a sentence of nine words, 
thought by Dr. Nichols to be Hungarian, or one of the similar lan- 
guages of the East of Europe. 

Again, on a marked card placed with a pen between two slates, and 
these held firmly together on the table in the light by Dr. Nichols, 
Mrs. Nichols, and Mr. Eglinton. there appeared, written with ink, in 
a most beautiful and delicate hand, like the finest plate-engraving, 
the following : 

''Lord, who shall dwell in thy Tabernacle, or who shall rest in thy holy hill ? 
— Qui ingreditur sine macula, et operatur justitiam .• Qui loquitur veritatem in 
corde suo, qui non agit dolum in lingua sua .• Nee fecit proximo suo malum, et 
opprobrium noji accepit adversus proximos suos, etc., etc. — The Lord's Taber- 
nacle is, at this present, in this room. Evil, corruption, vice, nor wickedness 
cannot get entrance. Why ? Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall inherit 
the Kingdom of Heaven." 

All this must have been written in about twenty seconds. Dr. 
Nichols concludes : " In a good light everything was done exactly as 
I have described. How a steel pen could write on a card between 
two slates held firmly together on the table, with the inkstand on the 
upper slate, I am not able to explain — I only know that it was done. 
The pen put dry between the slates was wet with ink when I took it 
out." Still the writing may have been done without the pen. 



Channing, Kant, and Sivedenborg. r 

I have spoken, in my account of Mrs. Mowatt (page 224), of her 
discussions, while somnambulic with Channing, on the subject of 
Swedenborg. The great Unitarian divine, while in accord with the 



APPENDIX. 369 



Swedish seer on many points, was disposed to question the too hu- 
man and earth-like character of some of his descriptions of scenes 
and occupations in the spirit-world. Mrs. Mowatt defended Swe- 
denborg with discrimination ; she admitted that some of his visions 
were probably subjective and imaginary, but contended that much of 
his testimony was in accord with the general report which spirits 
give of the state of things in the next stage of being. She was far 
from regarding him as infallible. She thought he was in error in 
describing the Moravians and other Christian dissenters as in a bad 
state because of their doctrinal tenets. She maintained that the only 
real heresy was the wrong thinking which led to wrong-doing. So 
long as a man was sincere and pure in heart, his mistakes on doc- 
trinal and historical points could have no very serious or permanent 
effect upon his future happiness. 

Channing was much pleased and interested, for he found her giv- 
ing back to him, in many instances, his own thoughts ; but at the 
same time maintaining independent views on some points. That she 
was in a state quite distinct from her normal state he was fully satis- 
fied. Her earnest but childlike manner, the tone of her voice, the 
character of her thoughts, her eyes with the lids hanging loose and 
the balls rolled up, were all peculiarities that did not fail to impress 
him. When she passed back into her normal state, and all her som- 
nambulic experiences were a blank to her, it was sometimes desira- 
ble that she should recall some one of them. This I could cause her 
to do by an act of volition, and placing my hand on her head, with- 
out uttering a word. Here was another unequivocal proof of the 
actual objective effect of will-power. Out of many incidents I could 
cause her to recall and announce unhesitatingly the particular one 
on which I fixed my thoughts ; and she would remain ignorant of all 
the rest. The. phenomenon was confirmed by hundreds of repeti- 
tions. 

We were in the same house with Channing some two weeks. I 
had known him from my early youth. We all had an affectionate 
parting with him, little supposing that it was the last interview we 
were to have here below with this truly great and saintly man. 

In a deeply interesting little volume entitled " Swedenborg and 
Channing : Showing the many and remarkable Agreements in the 
beliefs and teachings of these writers," Mr. B. F. Barrett, to whose 
parallel passages I am here indebted, makes out a strong case of 
coincidence in moral and religious thought. Channing told me 
emphatically he could not accept Swedenborg's topography of the 
spirit-world, or regard him as otherwise than deluded in some of his 
w memorable relations " ; but it is interesting to see how fully in ac- 
cord Channing was with all the facts and inferences of Spiritualism 
in regard to essentials. In answer to a letter of inquiry from Mr. 
Barrett, Dr. Channing's son wrote: "Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt has 
reported a conversation with my father about Swedenborg, which 
took place at Lenox in the summer of 1842. This is a definite, au* 
thentic report, colored, of course, by Mrs. Mowatt's personality." 

In Chapter IX. of Mrs. Mowatt's "Autobiography" (1854), will 
be found a record of my mesmeric experiences in her case. The 
whole was revised and enlarged by me before publication. In it I 

24 



370 APPENDIX. 

say, in a letter to her: " In times of extreme emaciation, when you 
could be lifted like a child, and when all who looked on you and 
heard your paroxysms of coughing would turn away with the per- 
suasion that you could not last through the season, you had always, 
in your somnambulic state, some pleasantry with which to dispel the 
fears of the standsrs-by. Your views of death were so serenely 
assured, and such was the quiet satisfaction with which you seemed 
to look forward to 'the common road into the great darkness,' that, 
the nearer the prospect was brought, the more grateful it became. 
' This King of Terrors was the Prince of Peace.' The separation of 
the waking from the somnambulic consciousness was most complete. 
Never, by any accident, could I discover that you brought into your 
waking state the slightest recollection of what occurred in your som- 
nambulic ; and this during a period of three years." (In the body 
of this work I erroneously set down the period as two years.) The 
curious reader will find in the Autobiography many further partic- 
ulars of my experiences. 

In her account of Channing she says : " He then told me that he 
had read a portion of Swedenborg's works with great attention, and 
he reverenced the author, although the doctrines had not as yet car- 
ried the same conviction to his mind as they had done to ours. In 
the subject of mesmerism he took the deepest interest. On two 
occasions he persuaded me to allow myself to be placed under the 
influence, that he might satisfy himself on several doubtful points. 
One was of the possibility of mind communicating with mind without 
the medium of language or any material sign. His experiment, I 
believe, convinced him that this could be the case." It has been 
well remarked that " the merest trifles are interesting that suggest to 
us an action in man independent of his present material organ- 
ization." 

Swedenborg says: "After the dissolution of the body, a man's 
spirit appears in the spiritual world in the human form altogether as 
in the natural world." And Channing says (Memoirs, Vol. II. 
p. 22) : " We shall be the same beings in heaven as on earth. . . . 
When Moses and Elijah conversed with Jesus on the Mount, they 
appeared in the human form, differing from ours only in its splendor." 

Swedenborg says: "Instantaneous reformation and consequent 
salvation would be comparatively like the instantaneous conversion 
of an owl into a dove, and of a serpent into a sheep." Channing 
says : "I know but one salvation for a sick man, and that is to give 
him health. So I know but one salvation for a bad man, and that is 
to make him truly^ thoroughly, conscientiously good, — to break the 
chains of evil habits, — to raise him to the dignity and peace of a 
truly religious life." 

According to Swedenborg, heaven is a state and not a place; so 
likewise is hell. Both, he says, are within the soul. Pure, unselfish 
love makes the one ; and a supreme self-love makes the other. 
Channing says (Works, Vol. IV. p. 52) : "I learn more and more 
that the great springs of happiness and misery are in the mind, and 
that the efforts of men to secure peace by other processes than by 
inward purification, are vain strivings. Salvation, heaven and hell, 
have their seat in the soul." 






APPENDIX. 37 J 



Of faith in immortality Charming says : " This faith is lamentably 
weak in the multitude of men. To multitudes, Heaven is almost a 
world of fancy. It wants substance. The idea of a world in which 
beings exist as pure spirits, or clothed with refined and spiritual 
frames, strikes them as a fiction. What cannot be seen or touched 
appears unreal. This is mournful but not wonderful; for how can 
men who immerse themselves in the body and its interests, and cul- 
tivate no acquaintance with their own souls and spiritual powers, 
comprehend a higher spiritual life ? . . . This skepticism as to 
things spiritual and celestial is as irrational and unphilosophical as it 
is degrading." 

Channing urges it upon us to seek some clearer, more definite 
conception of the future state. He says : " That world seems less 
real for want of some distinctness in its features. We should all 
believe it more firmly if we conceived of it more vividly." 

Swedenborg says : When a man " enters the spiritual world, or 
the life after death, he is in a body, as he was in the natural world. 
He sees as before ; he hears and speaks as before ; and when he is 
touched, he feels as before. He also longs, desires, wishes, thinks, 
reflects, is affected, loves, and wills as before." Channing says 
(Memoirs, Vol. II. p. 212) : "We shall be the same beings as on 
earth ; we shall retain our present faculties, our present affections, 
our love of knowledge, love of beauty, love of action, love of ap- 
probation, our sympathy, gratitude, and pleasure in success. We 
shall probably, too, have bodies not very different from what we now 
have." 

Swedenborg says : " This I can positively affirm, that a spirit has 
more exquisite sight, and also more exquisite hearing, than a man in 
the body; and what will seem surprising, a more exquisite sense of 
smell, and especially of touch ; for spirits see, hear, and touch each 
other." Channing says {Works, Vol. IV. p. 228) : "A new sense, 
a new eye, might show the spiritual world compassing us on every 
side. ... Is it at all inconsistent with our knowledge of nature to 
suppose that those in heaven, whatever be their abode, may have 
spiritual senses, — organs, by which they may discern the remote as 
clearly as we do the near? " 

In his Memoirs (Vol. II. p. 20), Channing says: "We need not 
doubt the fact that angels whose home is in heaven visit our earth 
and bear a part in our transactions." And he says of our departed 
friends : "To suppose them forgetful of the world where they began 
to live, is to make that life worthless, and to blot out a volume of 
invaluable experience. . . . Our friends who leave us for that world 
do not find themselves cast among strangers. . . . The closest at- 
tachments of this life are cold, distant, stranger-like, compared with 
theirs. . . . We are too apt to think of heaven as a solemn place. 
It ought to be viewed by us as a place of cheerful society. . . . Per- 
fect social happiness is reserved for a higher stage of existence. . . . 
This happiness would be wholly lost, were men in heaven to lose 
their peculiar characters ; were all to be cast into one mould ; were 
all, in becoming perfect, to become perfectly alike." All this corre- 
sponds with what Swedenborg has to say on the subject 

Swedenborg says of heaven: "No idle person is tolerated there, 



372 



APPENDIX. 



no slothful vagabond, no indolent boaster of others' studies and 
labors ; but every one must be industrious, skilful, attentive and 
diligent in his own office and employment." And Channing says: 
" The truth is, that all action on earth, even the intensest, is but the 
sport of childhood, compared with the energy and activity of that 
higher life. It must be so." 

Swedenborg says: " There is no determinate period during a 
man's regeneration at which he may say, I am now perfect." Chan- 
ning says : " In this life progression is the universal law. Nothing 
is brought into being in its most perfect state. ... Is it not natural 
to expect that in a future life our nature will be progressive ? . . . 
Let us not imagine that the usefulness of the good is finished at 
death. Then rather does it begin. Death has expanded their 
powers. We should represent them to our minds as ascended to a 
higher rank of existence, and admitted to co-operate with far higher 
communities." 

If there is one great lesson uniformly revealed in the deeper facts 
of Spiritualism, it is the confirmation of Christ's saying that as we 
sow we shall reap. On this point Channing says : " Let us not listen 
for a moment to a doctrine so irrational, as that our present char- 
acters do not follow us into a future world. If we are to live again, 
let us settle it as a sure fact that we shall carry with us our present 
minds, such as we now make them ; that we shall reap good or ill 
according to their improvement or corruption ; and, of consequence, 
that every act which affects character will reach in its influence be- 
yond the grave, and have a bearing on our future weal or woe." 

How perfectly all this corresponds with what we get in those com- 
munications (few and far between, I grant) which come to us with 
intrinsic evidences of their high spiritual authority! Thus we see 
that by the reverent study of his own intuitions, coupled with those 
which plainly actuated the life of Christ, and indicated, though per- 
haps not unerringly, the essentials of all religions, Channing arrived 
at convictions precisely similar to those prompted or justified by a 
study of the facts and inferences of Modern Spiritualism. 

Kant, like Channing, was an intuitionalist as well as a profound 
philosopher. He satisfied himself as to the genuineness of Sweden- 
borg's clairvoyant powers, and has left an interesting letter on the 
subject; but he too regarded many of the so-called visions of Swe- 
denborg as purely subjective. Of the latter's clairvoyant description 
of the great Stockholm fire (July, 1759), Kant, who investigated the 
case thoroughly, writes, " What can be brought forward against the 
authenticity of the occurrence?" He admits that Swedenborg's sys- 
tem corresponds with the conclusions of his own philosophy, and 
that " a wonderful agreement exists between his doctrines and the 
deepest results of reason." Accepting Swedenborg, as most Spirit- 
ualists do, as a medium and seer unsurpassed in authority, yet sub- 
ject to error and inherited prejudices, in spite of his protest to the 
contrary, they receive such testimony as that of Kant as an added 
corroboration of their own ethical and religious inductions from 
facts which they have empirically verified. 






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